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By Ray Bennett<\/span><\/p>\n LONDON \u2013 Nick Nolte, who turns 80 today, warned me of the dangers that lurked in Los Angeles. The Iowa-born actor had an explosive impact playing rebellious fighter Tom Jordache in the hit 1976 TV miniseries \u2018Rich Man, Poor Man\u2019, based on Irwin Shaw\u2019s terrific novel. He played rough-edged and rowdy characters in \u2018The Deep\u2019, \u201948 Hrs\u2019 and \u2018Teachers\u2019. He also made more thoughtful pictures including \u2018Who\u2019ll Stop the Rain\u2019, \u2018Under Fire\u2019, \u2018Cannery Row\u2019 and \u2018Heart Beat\u2019.<\/p>\n I met him first in Chicago on a junket for \u2018Teachers\u2019 and talked to him again in 1985 ahead of the release of a black comedy titled \u2018Grace Quigley\u2019 starring Katharine Hepburn in her last leading role as an elderly widow, lonely and suicidal, who hires a hitman (Nolte) to kill her. When I asked about his rambunctious image, he said, \u2018It\u2019s a fast pace. It\u2019s not so bad when you\u2019re working. Then, it\u2019s justifable to be a little extreme. You know, actors are extremists. That\u2019s what Katharine says. Hepburn. Quote her. I called her a natural. She said, \u201cOh, no. I\u2019m an extremist.\u201d It\u2019s when you\u2019re not working \u2026 if you carry on that behaviour when you\u2019re not working, you\u2019re not gonna survive.\u2019<\/p>\n Nolte lived then in Charleston, West Virginia, with his third wife, Rebecca. In part, he said, that was to avoid the kind of fast crowd that ran with comedian John Belushi, who had died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1982: \u2018I\u2019ve been hanging around Los Angeles for 20 years. I was there to play junior college ball at Pasadena City College. L.A. is dangerous. It\u2019s a beautiful place. It\u2019s pastel. It has no seasonal change, that\u2019s why it\u2019s all pastel. But it\u2019s dangerous in the aspect that you can\u2019t walk anywhere. You can\u2019t walk your way out of trouble. You\u2019re stuck. That\u2019s why it\u2019s more dangerous than, say, New York for the John Belushis. It\u2019s terrible to find yourself all alone in some place you don\u2019t know where in hell you are. That can happen but it\u2019s not gonna happen to me. It\u2019s the period between pictures that\u2019s the most difficult because you\u2019re on a whirlwind if you go right back to L.A. Thus, West Virginia. You have to wait for trains in Charleston. That\u2019s rather refreshing.\u2019<\/p>\n He said he learned a lot from his co-star on \u2018The Deep\u2019: \u2018It was my friend Robert Shaw who taught me, I loved that English camaraderie actor thing that we don\u2019t really have in America because the actors stay a little isolated. Richard Harris is the authority on that. He said we\u2019ve all got to learn that we can act without being drunk. Of course, he\u2019s had to give up the booze and he\u2019s absolutely right. My father-on-law is a retired cardiovascular surgeon in Charleston. He always says, boy, that was a great picture, Nick. Imagine what you could have done if you were sober.’<\/p>\n By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Nick Nolte, who turns 80 today, warned me of the dangers that lurked in Los Angeles. The Iowa-born actor had an explosive impact playing rebellious fighter Tom Jordache in the hit 1976 TV miniseries \u2018Rich … Continue reading <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"