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Actor,
born February 8, 1941, in Omaha, Nebraska. He was raised
in Iowa and Nebraska, the son of Frank Nolte, an irrigation
pump salesman and Helen Nolte (nee King), a department store
buyer. He showed little interest in theater and movies growing
up, finding the football field the best outlet for his hefty
build and aggression. He attended Arizona State University
to play football, but flunked out and proceeded to fail
academically at four other colleges in an attempt to continue
playing (Nolte did not learn to read until adulthood). At
age 21, he was arrested and received a suspended sentence
of 5 years in prison for selling fake draft cards. After
seeing a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
in 1962, Nolte finally realized his true calling. The process
of acting seemed to mirror his self-questioning at the time
and eased his discomfort with his environment, which he
deemed “violent, aggressive, hostile, competitive.”
Nolte
spent over ten years acting in regional theatres and taking
small TV roles. He and actress Sheila Page married in 1966,
but their relationship ended in divorce in 1971; the first
in a long and painful string of failed relationships, which
Nolte claimed were “very difficult to sustain, when
they’re about what a society thinks a relationship
should be.” His big career break came in 1975, playing
the hunky wastrel Tom Jordache in the TV mini-series Rich
Man, Poor Man, for which he won an Emmy award. Nolte was
35 when he played Jordache, and although he appeared ten
years younger, his maturity lent a unique depth and complexity
to the role.
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