An ailing Nick Nolte went on a vodka swilling bender before checking into the hospital for hip replacement surgery, sources exclusively tell The National ENQUIRER.
The aging actor, 73, was recently eyeballed in his Malibu neighborhood clutching a Sprite bottle, in which sources say he conceals his self-medicating cocktail. He was so nervous he allegedly got blitzed, the source revealed, forcing the procedure to be postponed until the next day!
Even doctors at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica had to “assure Nick he’d make it out alive.” The decrepit-looking thespian was voted People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1992.
He now needs a cane to help him walk. “He’s been in pain,” a friend told The ENQUIRER. “He’s been walking around hunched over.”
In June The ENQUIRER published photographs of a pint-sized nurse helping a very frail Nick to simply stand up outside a Beverly Hills doctor’s office.
“The hip surgery will help him keep up with his 7-year-old daughter Sophie, whom he takes to school bright and early every day at 6:30 a.m. – despite his pain.”
