Alessandro Nivola

Alessandro Antine Nivola (born June 28, 1972) is an American actor, perhaps best known for his roles in the films Coco Before Chanel, Best Laid Plans, Jurassic Park III, Face/Off, and the first two films of the Goal! trilogy.

Personal life

Nivola was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Virginia (née Davis), is an artist, and his father, Pietro Salvatore Nivola, is a professor of political science who wrote the book Laws of the Landscape: How Policies Shape Cities in Europe and America.^[1][2][3][4] Nivola's paternal grandfather was the Italian sculptor Costantino Nivola, and his paternal grandmother, Ruth Guggenheim,^[5] was a Jewish refugee from Germany.^[6] Nivola has described his mother as "a WASP, from the South",^[7][8] a descendant of Jefferson Davis.^[9] He has a brother, Adrian, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy.

Nivola married British actress Emily Mortimer in the Chilterns, Buckinghamshire in January 2003; the couple have a son, Samuel John, born in Westminster, London,^[10] on September 23, 2003. They also have a daughter, May, born on January 15, 2010. They used to live in Los Angeles California in Echo Park. They are currently living in Boerum Hill in Brooklyn, New York. He had fellow actor Heath Ledger as a neighbor.

Career

Nivola began his acting career while still an undergraduate at Yale, landing the leading role in a Seattle production of Athol Fugard's Master Harold...and the Boys. After college, Nivola debuted on Broadway in 1995 as the young lover of Helen Mirren in A Month in the Country. The next year he appeared in the 1996 NBC miniseries Danielle Steel's The Ring and landed his first film role as Joanna Going's preppy husband in Inventing the Abbotts before being cast as Nicolas Cage's paranoid sociopath brother in John Woo's Face/Off (both in 1997).

Nivola adopted an English accent to play a mystery man from former girlfriend Rachel Weisz's past in I Want You (1998), directed by Michael Winterbottom. He then appeared in the thriller Best Laid Plans and again as an Englishman in Patricia Rozema's screen version of the Jane Austen novel, Mansfield Park, both in 1999. He played a rock singer involved with his record producer, played by Frances McDormand, in the film Laurel Canyon. Nivola was one of the faces for the GAP's 2002 Ads campaign "For Every Generation".

Nivola trained hard for the filming of the Goal! trilogy, and has picked up a lot of skill and pace and was commended for his sudden burst of talent by the directors of Goal! 2.^[11] In the film Coco avant Chanel, Nivola again played an Englishman and learned to speak French for the role.^[12]

In 2010, Nivola appeared in the Off-Broadway play A Lie of the Mind, directed by Ethan Hawke at the Theatre Row in New York City.^[13]

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Blockbuster Entertainment Awards

• 1998: Nominated, "Favorite Supporting Actor in an Action/Adventure Film" – Face/Off

Independent Spirit Awards

• 2004: Nominated, "Best Supporting Male" – Laurel Canyon

References

External links

• Alessandro Nivola at the Internet Movie Database