Nick Nolte Returns to Venice After Seven Years Away From Red Carpets
At 85, Nick Nolte appeared at the 83rd Venice Film Festival for Casey Affleck’s gothic mystery Company, giving moviegoers a fresh look at an actor who has kept his public life small while continuing to work.
Nick Nolte stepped back onto a red carpet Tuesday, Sept. 8, at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, his first such appearance in more than seven years. The 85-year-old actor attended the photocall for Company, a new mystery anthology directed and co-written by Casey Affleck. For film readers, the news is less about a ceremonial return than about where Nolte has chosen to reappear: inside a strange, ambitious ensemble film that asks him to carry some of its most emotionally exposed scenes.
Yahoo Entertainment and Hello! both reported that Nolte’s last red carpet came at the 2019 premiere of Angel Has Fallen. Since then, he has kept a quieter public profile and has mainly been seen while working on projects. Venice put him in front of cameras again, with a cotton off-white button-down, black slacks, shoulder-length hair and a large gray beard. It was a plain outfit, which suited the moment. There was no attempt to turn the afternoon into a costume drama about aging. He showed up as an actor with a job to do.
Nick Nolte’s Venice return puts Company in the frame
Company is set across a single night in 1975 and uses stories nested inside stories. According to the film’s official synopsis, a woman named Evelyn arrives without an invitation at a holiday gathering and tells the story of Tom, an aging hermit who rescues a stranded actress during a Colorado blizzard in 1953. The actress then tells an older tale about a farming couple, a troubled drifter and a string of murders on the frontier.
The film premiered at Venice on Tuesday, though no theatrical release date has been announced. Adelaide Clemens, Caylee Cowan, Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy co-star. That cast gives the movie a useful sense of scale, but Nolte’s presence supplies its clearest link to a long American acting tradition: a performer whose face can suggest a whole past before he says a word.
That is hope, not a verdict. The material makes the premise sound unusual, and Venice is a fitting place for a film built around old stories, winter darkness and people sitting together while danger gathers outside. Whether Company turns those ingredients into something lasting remains unknown.
Photo: Alain Zirah · CC BY 2.0 · source
Casey Affleck describes Nolte’s speed and control
Speaking with reporters at the festival, Affleck discussed directing Nolte, especially in scenes with Cowan, who has been Affleck’s partner since 2021. Affleck said Nolte could reach vulnerable, emotional places “very, very quickly” and repeat that work whenever a scene required it.
