Upcoming Event: "Life with Oscar"

By Jennifer Ersalesi

Nick Cohen, an actor, writer, and filmmaker, will bring his stage show, Life with Oscar, to the Williams Center on September 20th. With an extensive background in various components of the performing arts, Nick is excited about visiting the Rutherford community and sharing his personal stage show. This is Rutherford interviewed Nick to learn more about his career and his upcoming performance.

TIR: Where do you currently live and work?

Nick Cohen: I’m a dual UK/USA national with a split personality, so I divide my time between quietly sipping cups of tea in London and manically running around the stage impersonating 29 characters in the US.

TIR: When did you begin acting?

NC: I started acting as a child in my mother Aileen’s BBC radio dramas. I was captivated by the sound studios — they had doors hanging in space and stairs that led nowhere, all just to create sound effects. At home, I’d put on shows for my family playing famous figures like the then-Prince Charles. Nothing much has changed!

TIR: When did you begin making films?

NC: I began making films while at Cambridge University; they were truly awful! Thankfully, those early disasters will never surface — pre-internet mercy! Later, I trained at the BBC’s highly competitive Drama Directors Academy — like The Apprentice for aspiring filmmakers — and went on to direct UK TV and indie films. That path eventually led me to Hollywood, where I lived with a double Oscar winner who sat on the Academy panel and promised me an Oscar.

TIR: Tell us more about your upcoming show at the Williams Center- Life with Oscar.

NC: Life With Oscar is that story: a darkly comic rollercoaster through pre-#MeToo Hollywood’s underbelly. I play 29 different characters, from the man who modelled the Oscar trophy itself to the psychopathic producer’s daughter destined to be my “mystic bride.” The journey spans my childhood, a dinner party with the producers of the original Superman movie that planted the seeds of my Oscar obsession, and a trip back to 1929 for the founding of the Academy Awards.

Along the way, there are glimpses of the famous faces who crossed my path — like Sacha Baron Cohen and Rachel Weisz — and the legendary names my Oscar-winning housemate knew personally, like Orson Welles and Marlon Brando.

The show isn’t just about Hollywood. It’s about ambition. I ask audiences: if there were a special Oscar just for you, what would it be? The answers range from booming “Best Person EVER” to the more modest - “Best Part Time Miniature Cutlery Designer.” It always sparks hilarious and sometimes profound conversations about success and sacrifice.

Really Life with Oscar is very cathartic and healing – its about turning a negative experience into something entertaining and funny. It took a few years and some therapy to get there…

It’s a Faustian tale of pre #MeToo Hollywood, where predators and victims are sometimes hard to distinguish, or one and the same. A deepening spiral of desperation, delusion, and debt littered with metaphorical, and occasionally, real, corpses.

TIR: You also sometimes lead theater workshops to help upcoming actors and filmmakers. What do you find most rewarding about leading those workshops?

NC: I love doing workshops, Q&A, and outreach. We’re hoping to run some in Rutherford and we have VIP tickets where VIP’s can also opt to have a 1 one 1 mentoring session on comedy, improvisation, or creative writing.

Honestly, the most rewarding part of leading workshops is watching that lightbulb moment when someone realizes, “Oh! I can actually DO this!” It’s a bit like being a mad theatrical scientist in a lab full of excitable actors and filmmakers — we mix wild ideas, explosive creativity, and the occasional bad improv game, and hope nothing blows up (metaphorically).

I love seeing shy participants suddenly morph into zany characters or timid first-time directors confidently barking orders like mini-Spielbergs. It reminds me why I fell in love with this world in the first place — it’s messy and magical. Plus, it’s cheaper than therapy and comes with applause!

TIR: Anything else you would like to add?

NC: Performing this at the end of Rutherford Day 2025 feels like bringing the madness home. After a day of food stalls, music, and celebration, come grab a seat at the Williams Center and let me take you on a high-energy ride and tell you the secret formula to winning an Oscar.

To purchase tickets for Life with Oscar, click this link.

A big shout out to long-time Rutherford resident, my uncle ‘Sensei’ Tom Latourette, whose idea it was to bring the show to Rutherford as part of his interest in local arts enrichment, and whose Web Jedi skills created our new website Lifewithoscarworldtour.com