Nicholas has worked in film, television and theatre in Australia, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Spain.
His first feature film role as the lead in Rolf De Heer’s acclaimed Bad Boy Bubby won him the Australian Film Industry Award for Best Actor. He was recently nominated by the Film Critics Circle of Australia for Best Actor in a supporting role for his portrayal of Joseph in Ivan Sen’s Limbo, and has been seen as an ethereal doctor in Storm Ashwood’s debut feature The School, an aristocrat in Foxtel’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, and a modern-day vampire in Erin Goode’s Jade of Death, for which he won Best Actor at the Denver Series-Fest 2018. He played an eccentric spaceman in Kurt Martin’s Moon Rock for Monday, a frustrated nuclear scientist in Peter Duncan’s ABC series Operation Buffalo, the hanging Judge in Leah Purcell’s debut feature The Drover’s Wife, the clownish Mr Potts in Born to Spy, a doubting priest in Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool, and the self-deluding religious zealot in Paramount’s The Secret She Keeps. He was Old Man Smithers (aka the Luna ghost) in Raja Gosnell’s Scooby-Doo, and currently is cast as the alcoholic and abusive Tommy in Goalpost Picture’s Black Snow, seasons 1 and 2.
Nicholas’ memoir Brushing the Tip of Fame was published in 2005, and he made his writer/director debut with the play Little Gods as part of the May Day Festival in 2013. He directed the sell-out production of Joel Drake Johnson’s Four Places for Outhouse Theatre in July 2014, and directed his own play Five Properties of Chainmale for the Griffin Independent season in April 2015. He directed the short film Like Gold for The Hub Studios The Bench Series (2017), and produced Peter Hanlon’s directorial drama debut The Reckoning of Christian Spencer.
Nicholas was awarded a PhD in Performance Studies in 2011. He has been a proud member of MEAA Equity since 1988.