Nick Nolte 2002 Premium Cotton T-Shirt
Mugshot Story
At about 11 a.m. on 11 September 2002, motorists on Malibu’s Pacific Coast Highway phoned 911 to report a black Mercedes weaving across lanes. California Highway Patrol officers pulled over 61-year-old Oscar-nominee Nick Nolte, who failed field–sobriety tests and was booked on suspicion of driving under the influence. Toxicology later showed the sedative GHB in his system – a legal “health drink” at some gyms, but illegal to drive on.
Three days later Nolte checked into Connecticut’s Silver Hill Hospital for rehab, signalling he would plead out rather than fight the case. On 12 December 2002 he entered a no-contest plea to one misdemeanour count of DUI. A Malibu judge sentenced him to three years’ probation, random drug testing and counselling/rehab, sparing him any jail time so long as he stayed clean.
The photograph—Nolte in a wildly floral Hawaiian shirt, hair in mid-explosion—spread worldwide within hours and is still cited as the archetype of the “train-wreck” celebrity mugshot. What could have been career-ending instead became a pop-culture artefact: Nolte was back on screen in Hotel Rwanda two years later and earned another Oscar nod by 2012’s Warrior, proving even the most infamous booking photo can fade while the work endures.
