New photos of Nick Nolte and his wife, Clytie Lane, show them stronger than ever and a source offers insight into one of the most private and respected couples in Hollywood.
“Nick and Clytie have this quiet, old-school kind of love that you rarely see in Hollywood anymore,” an insider exclusively tells Closer of the actor’s marriage.
“They’ve been through so much together. Clytie has been Nick’s rock, she keeps him grounded, and healthy. He says all the time that he’d be lost without her and it’s true, she’s been such a stabilizing force in his life. They’re incredibly private, but their love is obvious to anyone who spends time with them.”
The source went on to say that Clytie is “so nurturing” and “she dotes on him, but it’s not one sided. Nick is there for her too.”
“Clytie doesn’t care about the Hollywood scene and he loves that about her,” the source says. “They have a very slow pace of life in Malibu, they’re happy just being together, raising their daughter and enjoying life.”
Nick and Clytie got married in 2016. They share one daughter, Sophia, who was born in 2007. The actor appeared alongside his daughter in the 2018 film Head Full of Honey. He explained that the opportunity to share the screen came when director Til Schweiger visited his Malibu home on Halloween.
“I’d shown my daughter some of the movie the night before,” Nick told The New York Post in November 2018. “When she answered the door, she said, ‘You must be Til Schweiger. You made a pretty good movie’ — and ran off.”
Nick Nolte
Sophia was dressed up as a vampire that Halloween, prompting Til to ask, “Who was that vampire girl?” and suggesting that she play the role of Matilda in the film.
“You’re gonna have to talk to the mother, and it’s going to be a two-hour conversation,” Nick told the director.
The Paradise Lost alum said that after four hours, Til was able to convince Clytie to let Sophia play Nick’s granddaughter in the movie.
“She calls me Grandpa, anyway. I asked her why and she said, ‘Because you’re twice the age of most of my friends’ parents!’” Nick recalled.
In the same interview, the Nebraska native also addressed whether or not he was considering retirement from acting.
“I don’t understand retirement. I just don’t know what I’d do with myself,” he said at the time. “I’ll just keep at it until it doesn’t make any sense anymore.”
Nick further reflected on his experience working with his daughter on Head Full of Honey.
“I was quite surprised [that she wanted to act] because I didn’t think that she was really that interested in films even though I’ve been an actor all of her life and she knew I made films but I didn’t know that she had paid really much attention to it,” Nick told People in November 2018. “She never looked like somebody that said, ‘Wow, I want to be an actor.’”
“What you saw in that film was a relationship between a father and a daughter and you don’t really get it in real life because parents have a little bit of love and a little bit of a disciplinarian attitude that kind of shuts downs that ‘I love you’ kind of thing,” he added. “We got some intimacy that’s just going to be precious for our memories.”