Award-winning actor and producer Nivola recently wrapped filming the lead role of “Dickie Moltisanti” in the hotly anticipated Warner Bros. feature The Many Saints of Newark. Written by David Chase, the 1960s set mob film is a prequel to his acclaimed Sopranos series and will hit theaters in 2021.
Next year, he will begin work on Brady Corbet’s feature The Brutalist starring opposite Joel Edgerton, Marion Cotillard and Mark Rylance, and will also star opposite Ethan Hawke in the Louvin Brothers’ country music biopic Satan Is Real. Nivola won the 2018 British Independent Film Award (BIFA) for Best Supporting Actor and was also nominated for the London Critics’ Circle Award for his role as “Rabbi Dovid Kuperman” opposite Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams in Sebastián Lelio’s Disobedience. He also won a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Critics’ Choice Award for Best Cast for his performance as “Anthony Amado” in David O. Russell’s American Hustle, and he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the English rock musician “Ian McKnight” opposite Frances McDormand in Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon. He earned a Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination for playing “Pollux Troy” in John Woo’s Face/Off and in 2017 he won the Tribeca Film Festival Best Actor Award for his performance in the indie feature One Percent More Humid.
On stage, Nivola earned both Tony Award® and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for his performance as Frederick Treves opposite Bradley Cooper in the 2015 Broadway revival of The Elephant Man. He also earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for playing “Belyaev” opposite Helen Mirren in the Broadway revival of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country and an Outer Critics Circle nomination for his performance in The Winslow Boy, also on Broadway.
Most recently, Nivola starred opposite Jesse Eisenberg in the feature film comedy The Art of Self-Defense. He also led the cast of the Channel 4 limited series adaptation of Lucy Kirkwood’s award-winning play Chimerica and starred opposite Chris Evans and Ben Kingsley in Gideon Raff’s feature The Red Sea Diving Resort for Netflix. Prior to that he played Mark Madoff opposite Robert DeNiro in Barry Levinson’s HBO film The Wizard of Lies. Nivola has starred in many other films including Junebug, Coco Before Chanel, A Most Violent Year, Selma (Critics’ Choice Award nomination for Best Cast), The Neon Demon, Mansfield Park, Ginger & Rosa, Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Jurassic Park III among others.
Nivola and his wife Emily Mortimer set up the film and television production company King Bee Productions in 2014. He produced two seasons of HBO’s Doll & Em and produced the feature film To Dust starring Géza Röhrig and Matthew Broderick, which won both the Audience Award and the Best First Feature Award at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was also nominated for a 2020 Film Independent Spirit Award. King Bee currently has a first look deal with eOne Studios and is developing a full slate of film and television projects.
Nivola grew up in rural Vermont and graduated from Yale University with a BA in English. He lives in New York.
