Alessandro Antine^[1] Nivola (born June 28, 1972) is an American actor, who has appeared in feature films such as Coco Before Chanel, Best Laid Plans, Jurassic Park III, Face/Off, and the first two films of the Goal! trilogy.

Early life [edit]

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.^[2][3][4][5] Nivola's paternal grandfather was the italian sculptor Costantino Nivola, and his paternal grandmother, Ruth Guggenheim,^[6] was a Jewish refugee from Germany.^[7] Nivola has described his mother as "a WASP, from the South",^[8][9] and has stated that she is a descendant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.^[10] He has a brother, Adrian, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy.

Career [edit]

Parts of this article (those related to section Career) are outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (October 2012)

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]

Personal life [edit]

Nivola married British actress Emily Mortimer in the Chilterns, Buckinghamshire in January 2003; the couple have a son, Samuel John, born in Westminster, London,^[14] on September 23, 2003. They also have a daughter, May Rose, born on January 15, 2010. They live in Brooklyn, New York.

Filmography [edit]

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• Alessandro Nivola at the Internet Movie Database