In The White Lotus season three, Hollywood newcomer Sam Nivola stole the screen as one of the three children in the affluent Ratliff family. And Nivola’s real-life parents might be just as well-connected as his onscreen ones.
Sam, 21, plays Lochlan Ratliff, the youngest child of Parker Posey and Jason Isaacs’ characters. Though there’s been plenty of buzz about Sam’s onscreen brother Patrick Schwarzenegger, and his very famous last name, Patrick is not the only “nepo baby” on the show.
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Who Are Sam Nivola’s Parents?
Sam Nivola is the son of British actress Emily Mortimer and American actor Alessandro Nivola. Though his parents have been in some major hit films, Sam wasn’t raised in the public eye, telling British Vogue in February, “My parents aren’t, like, total celebrities. They don’t get recognized in the street.”
Sam’s mother rose to fame with 2001 rom-com Lovely and Amazing, in which she stars with Jake Gyllenhaal. She won an Independent Spirit Award for the role in 2003. From 2012 to 2014, she starred in the HBO Max series The Newsroom alongside Thomas Sadoski and Olivia Munn. She wrote and directed the miniseries The Pursuit of Love in 2021, which earned her a BAFTA win.
Other prominent roles include Scream 3 (2000), Match Point (2005), The Pink Panther (2006), The Pink Panther 2 (2009), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Shutter Island (2010), Mary Poppins Returns (2018), and Relic (2020).
She also co-wrote the upcoming Netflix film Jay Kelly alongside Noah Baumbach. The film stars George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Riley Keough and Billy Crudup.
Sam’s father, Alessandro Nivola, had his acting breakthrough in 1997 film Face/Off, playing Nicolas Cage’s brother. Other major roles included Mansfield Park (1999), Jurassic Park III (2001), Laurel Canyon (2002), Coco Before Chanel (2009), American Hustle (2013), Selma (2014), You Were Never Really Here (2017), and Disobedience (2017).
Most recently, appeared in Oscar-winning film The Brutalist (2024) and opposite Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.
Alessandro and Emily have been married since January 2003. They officially met while both starring in Love’s Labour’s Lost but were first introduced through a mutual friend over the phone, per Express.
In addition to their son, Sam, born in September 2003, the couple shares a daughter, May, born in 2010. The family lives in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Before appearing in The White Lotus, Sam starred alongside his sister in the 2022 Netflix film White Noise, playing the children of characters played by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.
In addition to having famous parents, Sam also has a pretty recognizable girlfriend. Since early 2024, Sam has been dating Iris Apatow, whose parents are Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.
Before you go, click here to see all the cameos you might have missed in ‘The White Lotus’ season 3.
