Nick Nolte talks about his role of Walter Smith in HBO’s Luck
Nick Nolte is proof that you can’t keep a good man down. The 70 year old actor has had hits over four decades in TV and movies – from 1970s TV blockbuster Rich Man, Poor Man, through 48 Hrs., Cape Fear, Prince of Tides, Affliction (for which he earned a Globes and an Oscar nomination) up to last year’s smash Warrior (another Oscar nomination).
In HBO’s dark gambling/horse racing drama Luck he plays Walter – an old trainer with one last shot at the big time courtesy of a mystery horse the racing world doesn’t even know exists…
How would you describe the character of Walter?
Walter is a very private man, very quiet – reluctant to let people in. He’s got a past that haunts him. He was a horse trainer in Kentucky with a big farm, and he ran in the Chicago circuit. And then as the fella that ran the farm got a bit older, he gave Walter a couple of mares and said you could breed them with any of the stock that I have. So he picked this legendary horse…
We stole that from a real situation where a great horse had a stall death and for a while they thought somebody had hit it with a baseball bat to collect the insurance. We’re playing it that happened on my watch. Then the Kentucky farm, the guy that owned it, the old man, he died. He had given me a couple of mares to breed with any of the stallions, and I had done that with this horse’s father.
So, when the farm was falling all apart and the kids aren’t interested, they’re selling off the horses and stuff… I just took off with the foal. He was a two year old at that time. I came to LA. I really don’t want the past to be brought up, and I really don’t want anybody to know the history of this horse.
Is he a good trainer?
He does have a different viewpoint. It’s about getting out of the way of the horse and let them run, because they love to run. If you whip a horse, and it doesn’t understand why, you can distort his whole perspective on running. Walter doesn’t believe in the whip.
It sounds like you know as much about the real world of horse racing as your character does.
Yeah, yeah, I do. Milch gave me the character, the guy it was based on, Jack Van Berg. I went down and hung out with Jack for a whole summer and I got his coat off him.
Do you think Luck has a message?
I think the gambling is an allegory for what’s happened in this country – gangster economics. David graduated with a lot of those guys from Harvard. I went to Yale, so I know what their mentality was – to get their hands on enough money to gamble in the biggest way possible. They were all gamblers.
HBO LUCK IS OUT NOW ON DVD AND BLU-RAY