Cast in The Art of Self-Defense after another actor dropped out, Nivola had 24 hours to learn black belt karate. But his greatest victory, he says, was securing the lead in David Chase’s big screen Sopranos prequel
‘I would say a good percentage of the roles I’ve done have only come to me after somebody dropped out at the last minute,” says Alessandro Nivola. I assume he is being self-deprecating, but he assures me he is being honest. He is in
London to talk about The Art of Self-Defense, a black
comedy that holds toxic masculinity in its satirical crosshairs. “This one, I’m sure somebody did drop out because I was offered it a week before it started.”
At 47, Nivola is in the midst of a particularly fruitful period of his career. He has been a working actor since he left Yale in the mid-90s, but the last few years have taken him to a new level. There was Selma, You Were Never Really Here and a remarkable turn in Disobedience. On television, he co-starred with Robert De Niro in the Bernie Madoff film The Wizard of Lies and played Lee Berger in Channel 4’s adaptation of Chimerica.