By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — At first glance, they couldn't seem more different.

James Coburn is nattily dressed in a black sweater and slacks, brown suede 
jacket, a red ascot tied rakishly around his neck. His still-thick silver hair is 
well coifed.

Nick Nolte arrives in faded pajama bottoms, rumpled denim shirt, 
yellow-and-black sneakers and a mustard-colored coat. His dark 
blond hair is tousled, his demeanor that of an aging surfer.

Yet these two veteran actors are cut from the same cloth.

Both are ruggedly handsome and Nebraska-born. And both are 
Oscar-nominated for Affliction, in which they play father and son.

Their Midwestern roots color their view of Hollywood. Integrity 
seems to matter more to both than the material trappings of success.

"For an actor, success is the worst thing you can ever have," 
Nolte says. "What happens with success and money is, it becomes 
an absolute limitation to the actor and restricts his ability to 
search for the truth. That's why success is always more dangerous than failure."

"Yeah, right. Because you start losing the work," says Coburn, 
finishing off Nolte's thought. "Work is the only thing that's really —"

"Fun," Nolte interjects. "Our great fun was making the movie. 
All of this (Oscar) stuff now, it's not fun. It's kind of an obligation. 
It appeals to the ego, so it's very seductive. And you have to be careful with it.

"(Robert) Mitchum once saw me when I was at one of these awards 
events, sweating and uncomfortable, and he kind of wandered 
over and leaned into my ear and said, 'It's all a crock.' He was 
reminding me that it's the work that you love."

Coburn and Nolte both have segued from TV to film, had meaty 
roles and misfires, critical acclaim and dry spells.

But this year they're riding high. Nolte, 58, is up for best actor, 
Coburn, 70, for supporting actor.

Nolte, nominated once before for The Prince of Tides, has had 
substantial box office success with Down and Out in Beverly Hills, 
North Dallas Forty and 48 Hours. Coburn is best known for tough-guy 
roles in films such as The Magnificent Seven, Our Man Flint and 
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Affliction is a departure for both. The film, about how an abusive 
father poisons his son's life, embodies the two D's Hollywood tends 
to avoid: dark and depressing. But the film's chances at box office 
success (made for $6 million, it's taken in $3.4 million since its 
December release) were of less concern to them than finding such challenging roles.

The two have an unusually comfortable rapport. They praise each 
other's work, finish each other's sentences and launch into stories, 
laughing heartily. They spoke for two hours Saturday, draped 
comfortably across couches in the Mediterranean-style mansion of 
Coburn's manager, Hilly Elkins.

The pair discoursed on subjects including war, their mutual distaste 
for hunting, the eccentricities of their favorite directors (Sam Peckinpah, 
Terry Malick, Alan Rudolph), herbal medicines (both swear by the supplement 
MSM; Coburn says it helped his arthritis, Nolte thinks it gave him a better 
head of hair) and acting as catharsis.

"It took him a long time to figure out what to wear today," Coburn says 
of the pajama-clad Nolte. "He never gets dressed. He's worn pajamas 
out to dinner. We don't call him Mr. Pajamas for nothing."

Then the two begin to riff on what the photos they're posing for will be 
worth if they don't win Oscars.

"The losers, still smiling," Nolte says.

"There was a bill for over half a million dollars on one film I did for 
security and bodyguards for this actress," Nolte says. 
"She used to go from her room to the elevator, down to the basement, 
get in a van and have two cars follow. They would pull up to her trailer 
real close so she could jump from the van to her trailer. She never 
touched ground, never saw the light of day."

"Did anyone even care?" Coburn asks.

"No! Who was going to shoot this person?" Nolte says. "She wasn't the 
president of the United States."

When Oscar winner Nicolas Cage's name comes up, Nolte laments 
the actor's decision to leave behind the quirky roles that established 
him for high-paying, one-dimensional action movies.

"Nic's gone," Nolte says. "Nic was this marvelous actor. Look at Raising 
Arizona and all that stuff. Then, bam! You know, he's got to turn down the $20 million."

Nolte and Coburn both have felt the lure of big bucks. But they say they learned to 
resist the offers after making wrong choices dictated by their wallets rather than 
their hearts.

"Most of us in the acting field grew up in middle-class and lower-middle-class 
families," Nolte says. "So money is something that is new and seductive. 
It takes great discipline to say no to something that they've offered you millions 
of dollars to do, even though you've read the script and it's got holes all through it.

"Once in a while they'll pile the money so high that you'll go (he lowers his voice) 
'Maybe I can make this work.' And you never can. You can get the greatest 
director in the world and all the greatest actors together, and they can't make 
the script right. The key is the material."

Nolte and Coburn found their dream project in Affliction, a story of a 
disintegrating, dysfunctional family in a dreary Northeastern town.

Coburn plays Nolte's abusive, alcoholic father. He growls, he explodes, 
he takes his distinctively deep voice up a few octaves during his rages.

Nolte waited a few years before tackling the role of Wade Whitehead, the 
depressed, hard-drinking sheriff, because he didn't think he was "mature 
enough" to handle the role when it was offered him in the early '90s.

"It was such an elegant performance," Coburn says. "It took him five 
years to get enough courage to even try."

In addition to nabbing Oscar nominations, the two have become Hollywood 
pals. So, at the start of the conversation, Nolte confesses to Coburn: "I started 
smoking again because of all this (Oscar) stuff."

"I quit smoking cigars," Coburn says.

Cold comfort: Nick Nolte and  James Coburn as tormented  son and abusive father in 'Affliction.'

"You see, some of us handle stress better than others," Nolte says. 
"Some of us are wound tightly. I start to sweat, especially when they 
announce your category."

Coburn sounds downright concerned : "Why are you so stressed out?"

"I'm younger than you, and I have more testosterone than you," Nolte 
says. "And I have more nominations than you."

Both Coburn and Nolte were nominated for (but didn't win) Golden Globe 
and Screen Actors Guild awards. Nolte also was nominated for and won 
two critics' awards.

When the topic turns to Oscar, they seem unimpressed by all the hoopla 
surrounding the ceremony.

"What looks so weird is to see all these actresses and actors all dressed 
up in designer clothes they would never wear and dripping with jewels that 
you know they never could afford," Nolte says. "It's a costume ball."

"It's become an event about something other than the Academy Awards," 
Coburn says. "When they started doing it on television, it lost all its dignity. 
It became a variety show."

But it's a variety show that both will attend. And no, Nolte has no plans to pull 
out his best PJs for the event. He will be attired in the traditional black tux, 
assures Coburn, in a fatherly way.

Both actors regret the direction movies have gone. Nowadays, studios want 
movies "geared to 12- to 24-year-olds," Nolte says.

"There are a lot of really fantastic actors and actresses now, and studios 
waste them on junk," Coburn says. "Because they don't know what a good 
script is anymore. (Studios) don't have that imagination to take anything 
beyond Popeye or Batman, Superman, or old television shows. Lost in Space. 
What about a kangaroo who lives in Hollywood?"

Nolte recounts attending the premiere of Godzilla.

"I had a studio head once say to me, 'I don't make films that I would go 
see,' and I thought of that at the premiere," Nolte says. "I looked over 
to my left, and there were all the executives that had made it. They were in their 70s. 
And I thought, 'How can these men possibly relate to this movie? This is a kids' 
movie.' And I could see a kind of a sadness to these guys."

Might not winning an Oscar make the picture a bit rosier for an actor?

"If you win an Oscar, the clout is good for studio films because you've 
had this huge recognition," Nolte says. "And then they'll come to you and 
say, 'OK, we have this action picture,' and you're back in the same bind." 
So, he adds, "the best place for an actor to go is into the independent world."

Their wisdom comes from seasoning. Both feel they're at the top of their games 
now, with many movies under their belts. Nolte has made about three dozen, 
Coburn nearly twice as many.

"Actors of my generation are now faced with a dilemma of where they can 
find and do the material they want to do," Nolte says. "In the old days, an 
actress could do The French Lieutenant's Woman at a studio. But now studios 
aren't doing that. Now you have to go out and search for it. But there's plenty 
of work; we just have to go out and find it."

Despite their lamentations, both find that acting still provides a pretty good life.

"I was talking to Jessica Lange the other day," Nolte says. "And she said, 
'What are we going to do? Do we have to go broke to do what we want to do?' 
But, you know, we've already accumulated so much that we're going to be fine. 
And if you make just two $250,000 movies a year, you'll live fine."

Coburn seconds the motion: "You can find a way to live on that."