Nicky Katt
Nicky Katt is an actor, born 1970.
Agustin Islas Katt started as a child actor, which is why he turns up as a schoolboy in Gremlins and a teenager in The 'Burbs before he was twenty. As an adult he became a specialist in men you would cross the street to avoid. Richard Linklater used him repeatedly and those are the roles that stuck: Clint in Dazed and Confused, the older guy circling the party looking for someone to hit, is roughly forty seconds of screen time and completely indelible. He also appears in SubUrbia, Waking Life and The School of Rock.
Steven Soderbergh liked him too. He is Stacy the Hitman in The Limey, a bored professional having a conversation about the job, and he later turned up in Full Frontal and Behind the Candelabra. Christopher Nolan gave him a nervous local detective in Insomnia. In A Time to Kill he plays Billy Ray Cobb, one of the two men whose crime sets the story going, and he makes no attempt whatsoever to soften him.
Boston Public gave him the lead film never did, a run from 2000 to 2002 as a teacher whose methods are a standing argument. He kept working through the 2000s in Sin City, both halves of Grindhouse and Snow Angels. He died in 2025.
Movies (35)
- Gremlins (1984)
- The School of Rock (2003)
- Sin City (2005)
- A Time to Kill (1996)
- The 'Burbs (1989)
- Death Proof (2007)
- Sister Act (1992)
- Insomnia (2002)
- Dazed and Confused (1993)
- Planet Terror (2007)
- The Babysitter (1995)
- Boiler Room (2000)
- The Cure (1995)
- Secondhand Lions (2003)
- The Brave One (2007)
- Grindhouse (2007)
- The Limey (1999)
- The Sitter (2011)
- Rules of Engagement (2000)
- World Trade Center (2006)
- Phantoms (1998)
- Behind the Candelabra (2013)
- The Doom Generation (1995)
- The Way of the Gun (2000)
- Waking Life (2001)
- Full Frontal (2002)
- Snow Angels (2007)
- One True Thing (1998)
- 21 Years: Richard Linklater (2014)
- Riding the Bullet (2004)
TV (4)
Where to start with Nicky Katt
Ten minutes of Dazed and Confused is enough to understand him. Clint exists to ruin a party, and Katt plays him with none of the winking a period comedy usually invites, which is why the character is still frightening thirty years on.
The Limey is the connoisseur's pick, one long scene of professional small talk that he underplays into something very funny. Boston Public is the only place to watch him carry a story week to week, and he is excellent in it. Insomnia and A Time to Kill mark the two ends of his usual range, nervy and repellent. Sin City and The School of Rock are the fun ones, three minutes each and both memorable. Waking Life is the strangest thing he did and the best evidence that Linklater knew exactly what he had.