He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for The Prince of Tides (1991).

His other notable films include The Deep (1977), Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), North Dallas Forty (1979), 48 Hrs.

(1990), Cape Fear (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Jefferson in Paris (1995), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Good Thief (2002), Hulk (2003), Hotel Rwanda (2004), Over the Hedge (2006), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008), Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010), The Company You Keep (2012), Gangster Squad (2013), A Walk in the Woods (2015), Head Full of Honey (2018), and Angel Has Fallen (2019).

[a] His father, Franklin Arthur Nolte (1904–1978), was a farmer's son who ran away from home, nearly dropped out of high school and was a three-time letter winner in football at Iowa State University (1929–31).

[2] Nolte's maternal grandfather, Matthew Leander King, invented the hollow-tile silo and was involved in early aviation.

[7] Poor grades eventually ended his studies, at which point his career in theatre began in earnest.

Nolte starred in The Deep (1977),[12] Who'll Stop the Rain (1978),[13] and North Dallas Forty (1979) which is based on Peter Gent's novel.

[19] Nolte starred with Katharine Hepburn in her last leading film role in Grace Quigley (1985).

[22] Later, he starred in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear with Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange.

[23] Nolte also starred in Lorenzo's Oil (1992),[24] Jefferson in Paris (1995),[25] Mulholland Falls (1996)[26] and Afterglow (1997).

[29] Nolte starred with Sean Penn in three films, including Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line,[30] U Turn,[31] and Gangster Squad.

"[33] Nolte continued to work in the 2000s, taking smaller parts in Clean and Hotel Rwanda, both performances receiving positive reviews.

[37] In 2011, Nolte played recovering alcoholic Paddy Conlon in Warrior, and was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 2015, Nolte starred in the biopic comedy-drama A Walk in the Woods[40] and in the revenge thriller Return to Sender.

[41] From 2016 to 2017, Nolte starred in Graves on Epix about a volatile, hard-drinking former U.S. president who has been retired for 25 years and who has a political epiphany to right the wrongs of his past administration in very public and unpredictable ways.

He was given three years' probation, with orders to undergo alcohol and drug counseling with random testing required.

[60] In 2018, he told The Saturday Evening Post that he did not have a drug problem and that he had been "relatively clean outside of prescription stuff for years".