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Alessandro Nivola

Alessandro Nivola has built the kind of career that resists a single neat label. The American-British actor, born in Boston in 1972, has moved steadily between film, television and theatre, taking on leading roles and sharply drawn supporting parts without settling into one obvious lane. After graduating from Yale University with a BA in English in 1994, Nivola made his Broadway debut opposite Helen Mirren in A Month in the Country, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination. His film breakthrough followed in John Woo’s Face/Off, where he played Pollux Troy, the brother of Nicolas Cage’s Castor Troy. It was an early demonstration of Nivola’s ability to bring nervous energy and an off-centre edge to a character. His subsequent films show considerable range: period drama in Mansfield Park, blockbuster adventure in Jurassic Park III, intimate character work in Laurel Canyon and Junebug, and appearances in American Hustle, A Most Violent Year, Selma, You Were Never Really Here and The Art of Self-Defense. He later took the lead role of Dickie Moltisanti in The Many Saints of Newark, the feature-film prequel to The Sopranos. In 2024, he entered comic-book territory as the Rhino in Kraven the Hunter. Nivola has maintained a substantial television career alongside his film work, appearing in The Company, The Wizard of Lies, Chimerica and Black Narcissus. Theatre has remained just as important. His Broadway credits include The Winslow Boy and The Elephant Man, with the latter earning him a Tony Award nomination. That movement between mediums suits Nivola. He can play composed or volatile, polished or uneasy, often finding the tension beneath a character’s surface. His career is less about repeating a familiar screen persona than about choosing roles that give him something different to uncover.