Alessandro Nivola is somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike, holding his cell phone vertically.
He’s heading to New York from New Jersey for the 2026 Gotham TV Awards, where his “Love Story: John F. Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette” co-star Sarah Pidgeon is nominated, but the 25 minutes he’s set aside for this conversation are the only time in his schedule he’s finally caught up with by his own admission. The trip to Manhattan involves multiple obligations.
“It was definitely a surprise to me,” Nivola says of the response to the Ryan Murphy-produced limited series in which he plays Calvin Klein. “The impact the show had was unexpected.”
For an actor who has spent nearly 30 years as one of the least talked about but most respected names in the room, he’s been content to simply make art.
Nivola, 53, has built a career that many working actors would consider enviable, but one that has historically been overlooked by the broader awards system. From the Hasidic rabbi in “Disobedience,” to the power-hungry prosecutor overseeing the FBI Abscam operation in “American Hustle,” to the real-life civil rights lawyer John Doerr in “Selma,” he remains one of the many “that guy” roles he’s played. And there are fan favorites, including his appearances in “Saints of Newark” and “The Brutalist.” A series of performances included in the film, almost all of which won him acclaim without taking him at all.
The current Emmy conversation surrounding his work on FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette” is the first time the awards radar and the work appear to be in sync.
Nivola says he discovered the name, which is as synonymous with fashion as the Calvin Klein icon he plays, on YouTube.
“I never actually saw him speak. I never saw any interviews with Calvin, I never met him in person,” Nivola told Variety. “I went to YouTube and typed in his name, and an interview he did sometime in the ’80s popped up. His behavior, his voice, his accent, his physical mannerisms, everything was unique to him, but also unique to New York at a particular time, to a particular type of crowd. It was familiar to me, but it was also very specific.”
The series finds Klein, fresh out of rehab, at a crossroads, trying to present a dignified face to the world while still holding on to every version of himself he’s ever been. Nivola has challenges ahead.
“The trick for me was to introduce someone to the world with an authority, grace and class similar to someone who had recently decided that he was no longer the wild guy who hung out with Steve Rubel all night long,” he explains. “But to think that it’s thinly veiled over this mischievous, mischievous, devilish, funny, sexy, flirtatious, and often very passionate person. If you watch the video, all of that is there.”
He worked particularly hard on his speaking career, developing a Bronx accent. Klein spent decades without completely losing it. “He’s even taken speech therapy classes to try to get rid of it, but there’s still some left,” Nivola says. “Despite the international sophistication he has over it, that comes through.”
When the car enters the Holland Tunnel, the video connection is disconnected, but the audio is still maintained. The conversation continues in the dark.
Whether all of this ultimately places Nivola in the league of transformative actors he has spent a lifetime studying is a question he is reluctant to directly answer. He says the label “character actor” is never, and never has been, a good fit.
“Acting for me is all about character acting,” he says. “I can’t imagine doing it any other way. Everyone is so specific and unique. The joy of this job for me is trying to give each character as much detail and specificity as possible, so they become universal and recognizable.”
The Boston-born actor cites his Oscar-nominated role in Daniel Day-Lewis’ In the Name of the Father as his North Star and says it was the performance that really got him into acting. He describes the performance as “really sexy, really handsome, really cool and adorable, but also eccentric and unique from a particular area of Belfast, a particular era.”
Interestingly, his own first film instincts date back to watching Nicolas Cage on the set of John Woo’s Face/Off.
“I created that character after watching a Robert Crumb documentary directed by Terry Zwigoff,” Nivola says of his Face/Off character Pollux Troi. He then narrated the conversation between the two, imitating Cage with perfect pitch.
“Nick was so fired up. He kept saying to me, ‘Yeah, Alessandro, I like it very dark and I think you should go with it.’ He was so excited about all this kind of weird stuff that I was doing, and if he hadn’t been there, I don’t think I would have been too scared to do it and approach it in a realistic way. He was like my protector.”
But the movie he feels least at ease with is the one that never happened.
Director Todd Haynes’ long-conceived Peggy Lee biopic “Fever,” starring Michelle Williams, appears to have fallen apart before the cameras even rolled. Nivola was named as Lee’s longtime guitarist and collaborator. He still doesn’t know exactly why the funding fell through.
“I can’t believe that failed,” he says passionately, still looking forward to the opportunity, but also eyeing potential co-stars. “She was 100% ready for an Oscar. She was just screaming for an Oscar to be made. I never understood until the end what happened with the financiers. I don’t know why they were so cold-hearted. But maybe they will. I’m Chris I’m working on another project with Teene Vachon, so I’m going to have to call her after I get off and tell her what the hell is going on, right? I had all my jazz guitar chops ready and that’s when it happened.” It was a real shame that it all got cancelled. ”
Just weeks after that conversation, Vachon and her producing partner Pamela Koffler would be named among the recipients of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at this year’s Governors Awards.
Meanwhile, Nivola is filming The 99ers, a film directed by Nicole Cassel about the 1999 U.S. women’s national soccer team. He plays Tony DiCicco, the team’s coach. On the morning of our conversation, he had just left the set where he co-stars with Emilia Jones.
“Actually, it’s been a long time since I’ve played a truly lovable character,” he says. “It’s kind of nice.”
As the car exits the tunnel and enters Manhattan, and Nivola adjusts his phone, the skyline is barely visible as the sun sets behind him. As he prepared to step out of the car, we asked him if he had anticipated this version of his career, one in which awards conversations are no longer hypothetical.
“I’m definitely a late bloomer,” he laughed. “That’s better than the other way around.”
