Sam Nivola is "proud" he's never relied on his famous parents for help with his career.
The White Lotus star is the son of actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola and the pair banned him from auditioning for roles before he turned 18, but a year before then, his high school drama teacher helped him land an audition for White Noise and he sent in a self-tape in secret.
Once he made it through to the next round to play the son of Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig's characters, he confessed to his parents and they said: “Holy f****** s***, it’s a Noah Baumbach movie?! You have to do the callback!”
And asked about being a "nepo baby", he laughed to Variety: “Other tha my genes, I don’t think I can attribute much of my success to my parents. I feel proud that I’ve done it for myself, and sometimes in spite of them.”
"[With my first role] I didn’t get my dad’s agent to call up so-and-so. I did it by myself. I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to be able to say that anything I’ve achieved has been because of anyone other than me. And I’m proud of that.”
Emily and Alessandro were further "upset" when Sam, now 21, dropped out of college after just one semester studying Latin and film at Columbia.
He said: "My parents were upset. It totally scared them, which is understandable. I wasn’t happy at the time because I couldn’t dedicate everything in me to acting.
"And, I have problems with authority figures.”
Despite growing up with parents in the public eye, Sam was unprepared for the level of fame The White Lotus would bring him.
He said: "When The White Lotus was at its peak, I literally couldn’t walk down the street in Brooklyn — my hometown — without being swarmed.”
To escape the attention, the Perfect Couple actor and his friends asked ChatGPT to find "the worst bar in the East Village" and ended up in a taproom where speaking was banned.
He recalled: “We’re yelling, ‘This place is f****** awesome!’ and everyone’s like, ‘Shhh!’”
