Nick Nolte acts blind
An amazing, caring, heart-warming story from Hollywood this afternoon. New movie The Beautiful Country features a blind Vietnam veteran, played by (sighted) actor Nick Nolte. You'll be pleased to hear though that he didn't just turn up on set and stylishly bump into things with his arms outstretched, whilst staring wildly and blankly ahead. Oh no. Just read from contactmusic.com.
This outstanding piece of journalism really helps us to appreciate that Nick Nolte is one hell of a regular guy. The star of Cape Fear, Lorenzo's Oil and Hotel Rwanda apparently "spent weeks studying the sightless" for this part. And thanks to an American blind association he actually got some blind training - a kind of reverse rehabilitation if you like. Dehabilitation?
Many have observed that blind people must have a Zen-like existence because of the lack of complexity in their lives due to less visual information going into their brains. The article claims Nolte found that the hours on set gave him "an odd sense of peace". He added: "If you keep yourself blinded for eight hours you find a peace that you never imagined".
Beautifully, it seems the superstar decided that training alone wasn't enough and, when it came to the actual filming, needed to really blind himself with the help of two specially made contact lenses, "one that covered the iris, which was solid black, and a milk-white contact lens over the rest of the eye".
When the movie world goes to these lengths to re-create disability accurately, you realise there's really no need for disabled people. Good on ya Nolte, you unusually sensitive method man. Tomorrow I will be spending the day pretending to act.
