Biography

June 28, 1972 · Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Alessandro Antine Nivola

1.75 m

One of the pleasures of being an actor, is kind of getting out of yourself and trying to stretch and reshape yourself into someone else that's had a very different kind of experience. Obviously you bring whatever you know about life and about the way that people behave and everything to a performance.

[on indie vs. mainstream films] The only thing is that on a small movie you don't have to wait around very long to shoot your scenes, but then when you shoot them they don't spend very much time with them. On a big movie you wait for hours and days to actually do your bit, but then when it comes, with some exceptions, you tend to be able to spend more time doing it and over it. And I don't know, I tend to get better as I go along, whereas some people sort of hit their first takes and they get worse from there.

[on his role in Volte/face (1997)] At the time, I was obsessing over a documentary about Robert Crumb [Crumb (1994)]. He had this brother named Charles, who's in the movie, and I stole his voice. I played a tape of the film for Nicolas Cage and he said [imitating Cage], "Ah, yeah . . . errrr . . . very dark. I like it". Nic had a really big impact on me. It was my first film - I'd never been to L.A., or anything. He really urged me on and gave me the confidence to be daring.