Playing a detective in Sidney Lumet’s Q&A, he wore shoes with six-inch lifts so as to always lean forward in people’s faces—lending a dramatic physical aspect to the detective’s prying character. Nolte’s next quality role came in Martin Scorsese’s “Life Lessons” in the 1989 group of vignettes, New York Stories. He played an aging painter, overwhelmed by work, romance, and growing old. The early ‘90s brought some major career feats and follies. He played an affecting role as the tortured, rough, cruel, and ultimately sensitive hero of Barbara Streisand’s The Prince of Tides in 1991, and followed with the portrayal of a cold and emotionally vapid lawyer in Scorsese’s thriller remake, Cape Fear. In 1992, he appeared alongside fellow Hollywood fringe-player Susan Sarandon in the ruthless tear-jerker Lorenzo’s Oil, playing a father desperately seeking a cure for his son’s degenerative brain disease. His rough on the outside, soft on the inside portrayals resulted in a true Hollywood initiation in 1992—becoming People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”

Nolte’s next few roles did little to swerve his increasingly Hollywood-heavy career path. He made the aptly-titled Another 48 Hours which presented little challenge for the actor. He then went on to play alongside Julia Roberts in the disastrous I Love Trouble, leading Nolte to proclaim, “I’m a whore sometimes,” in reference to the fat paycheck he received for the film. Other questionable career choices include James Brooks’ musical, I’ll Do Anything and a Merchant-Ivory period piece, Jefferson in Paris. In the midst of this melange of unfortunate miscasts, Nolte’s physical intuition came to the rescue in the form of a heart murmur, which he claimed was a “physical ailment that would tell me I’m in the wrong situation.”

In 1996, Nick Nolte finally began making films that could reveal the depth and range of his talent. Having broken off a long-term addiction to drugs and alcohol through the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, Nolte was able to redirect his career, choosing challenging roles in high-quality, often low-budget, films. He played a confused and disenchanted husband opposite a sparkling Julie Christie in Afterglow, which won significant critical praise. However, it was his next two roles that crashed through all the barriers of his previously established reputation. He played the devastatingly belligerent Lt. Col. Gordon Tall in The Thin Red Line with stunning intensity and persuasion. His howling, red-faced lieutenant could evoke terror and inspire a reluctant empathy in a matter of a single change of expression.