NEED TO KNOW
- Sam Nivola, son of actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola, addressed his “nepo baby” label in an interview for Variety‘s Actors on Actors with Cooper Koch
- Despite their own long careers, Sam’s parents discouraged him from following in their footsteps
- Sam recently starred as Lochlan Ratliff in the third season of The White Lotus
Sam Nivola is addressing his “nepo baby” label.
The actor sat down with Cooper Koch for Variety‘s Actors on Actors, where they both shared their experiences on their respective recent projects: Koch’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and Nivola’s The White Lotus.
Nivola is the son of actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola, both of whom have long careers on screen. The White Lotus actor shared that both his parents actually advised him against following in their footsteps.
“My whole thing was that my parents really didn’t want me to be an actor, which I totally get — I don’t know if I’d want my kid to be an actor,” Nivola, 21, admitted. “It’s a really mentally tough career to be in.”
He continued, “Even if I had no success, I would want to be doing it. But they really didn’t want me to do it.”
Fabio Lovino/HBO
Nivola has appeared in a number of big projects in recent years, including The Perfect Couple and White Noise — the latter in which Sam’s sister, May Rose, also featured. Their parents were “green with envy” that they’d be spending so much time with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. But still, Alessandro told PEOPLE in 2021 that acting “definitely wasn’t something we were encouraging” for their children.
The film’s director, Noah Baumbach, went to Sam and May’s school, seeking children to cast in the film, Alessandro said. Baumbach was thrilled at the opportunity to cast the two Nivola children, he added.
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“At that point, it felt cruel to tell them they couldn’t do it because it was such a high-class project,” Alessandro said.
Sam and May never enlisted their parents for acting advice, though. “They never come to me for advice for anything,” Alessandro said with a laugh. “They haven’t even asked me once to read through a scene with them.”
Alessandro and Mortimer — who most recently featured in Kraven the Hunter and Paddington in Peru, respectively — wed in 2003.
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