EXCLUSIVE “American Hustle” DA Alessandro Nivola is hotter than ever this year. I just told he signed to star in Joe Berlinger’s “Facing the Wind.” Now I can tell you exclusively Nivola has signed on to play Civil Rights activist John Doar in Ava Duvernay’s “Selma” from Brad Pitt and DeeDee Gardner’s Plan B.
Doar– 92 years old and going strong still as a New York attorney– was a key civil rights activist in the 1960s. Nivola will be playing him as a young man. But just five years later, Doar– in the 1970s–helped prepare the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Just FYI.
Nivola Joins David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King and Tom Wilkinson as LBJ. Nivola has had a busy year so far, winning a SAG Award for best cast for “American Hustle”, being nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance on Broadway in Terrence Rattigan’s “The Winslow Boy”, co-starring with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in JC Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year”, and producing the comedy series “Doll & Em” for HBO under his King Bee Productions banner. That show, as you know, co-starred his talented wife Emily Mortimer.
Whew! Is that enough? No. Nivola is in Atom Egoyan’s current “Devil’s Knot.” And this fall he returns to Broadway to star opposite Bradley Cooper in a revival of “The Elephant Man”. Nivola, Cooper and Patricia Clarkson will be on hand to present together at the Tony Awards on Sunday.
