Nick Nolte Was a 'River Kid' in Iowa, Now He Lives With a Tree in L.A.

My mother, Helen, who was all dressed up that day, was waiting for the man who had left. Instead, she gently embraced a stranger.

The war also transformed my mother. She went to work, and by the end of the war she was a determined, liberated woman who had a significant influence on me.

She worked in retail and fashion related to the war effort. After, she continued to work in fashion as a buyer for department stores.

We lived in one section of a three-story yellow Victorian house. An older woman occupied the other section.

Before the war, my father had attended Iowa State University in Ames, which is where he met my mother. After the war, he worked as an engineer.

My mother had blonde hair and a face and figure that caught everyone’s attention. She had a fashionable style and was handy with a needle and sewing machine.

Best of all, she had a healthy respect for the imagination. She’d take Nancy and me to a shed in the woods near a cave. There, she’d spin yarns about an old guy who lived in there because he didn’t want a modern life.

My mother didn’t believe we had to be great students. A brand new idea or doing something unique was much more exciting.

I got along with my mom. But my sister was often puzzled and hurt by her frequent rages and blunt way of putting things.

When I was 7, we moved to Waterloo, Iowa. My father’s company made industrial-size pumps to control the Mississippi and had transferred him there.

Right after we moved in, my mother took Nancy and me door-to-door, introducing herself to housewives and making sure they knew she was a working woman. Soon after she took a job in a local department store.

My mother took Dexedrine. When I wasn’t up for school, she’d give me one, calling it a “vitamin pill.” She also drank a few vodka tonics each evening. I was allowed to drink at home at 15.

I often thought of myself as a river kid. We lived near the Cedar River, where I’d sit on its banks and watch the moving water for hours.

In school, I was a solid football player. But after a friend and I pulled a prank, a summer-camp coach vowed I’d never play football for any school again. We moved almost immediately to West Omaha, where I could play.

After high school, I went to several colleges on football scholarships, but my grades weren’t overwhelming. In 1962, I left Pasadena City College in Los Angeles and wound up rooming in Laurel Canyon with two older women.

The following year, a friend asked me to tag along while he took an acting class taught by Bryan O’Byrne. The class was at Bryan’s house at the top of Laurel Canyon.

At some point, Bryan gave me a script to read. I was nervous, but I gave it a shot. When I finished, he said, “You don’t know it yet but you’re an actor. You’ve got it.” That was a turning point for me.

Today, I live in the Malibu Hills in L.A. I’ve built several houses over the past 40 years. One of them is made of river rock. I gave it to my daughter, Sophie.

My partner, Clytie, and I live in the two-bedroom, three-story house I built around a gigantic sycamore tree and its limbs. Our bedroom is on the top floor.

I wanted to get as close to the tree as possible. Having it in the room makes you realize you’re not the only one alive in there.