Throughout his 20s, he worked as an actor, using the stage name David Holdaway. He played small roles at various theatres, including the West Yorkshire Playhouse and, for a three-year period, at the Royal National Theatre. He struggled as an actor and has said "I’d committed myself to a profession for which I lacked not just talent and charisma, but the most basic of skills. Moving, standing still – things like that." Nicholls says that a turning point in his career came when a friend gave him a copy of PJ Kavanagh’s memoir The Perfect Stranger, which tells the author's own tale of maturation, finding love, and discovering his path in life.
Writing career
Novels
Starter for Ten
The Understudy
One Day
Us
Sweet Sorrow
Screenwriting
Nicholls co-wrote the adapted screenplay of Simpatico and contributed four scripts to the third series of Cold Feet. For the latter, he was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award for Best New Writer. He created the Granada Television pilot and miniseries I Saw You and the Tiger Aspect six-part series Rescue Me. Rescue Me lasted for only one series before being cancelled. Nicholls had written four episodes for the second series before being told of the cancellation. His anger over this led to him taking a break from screenwriting to concentrate on writing Starter for Ten. When he returned to screenwriting, he adapted Much Ado About Nothing into a one-hour segment of the BBC's 2005 ShakespeaRe-Told season. He wrote a screen adaptation of his novel, One Day, which was made into a film starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. In 2006, his film adaptation Starter for 10 was released in cinemas. The following year, he wrote And When Did You Last See Your Father?, an adaptation of the memoir by Blake Morrison. His adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles for the BBC aired in 2008. He has also adapted Great Expectations; the screenplay has been listed on the 2009 Brit List, an annual industry poll of the best unmade scripts outside the United States. He wrote The 7.39, which was broadcast on BBC One in January 2014. In 2015, he wrote the screenplay of Far from the Madding Crowd for BBC Films of Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel of the same name. It is the fourth film adaptation of the novel. Nicholls worked on the initial script for Bridget Jones's Baby but the script was re-written and he was not credited in the film. He wrote Patrick Melrose, a five-part television series based on Edward St Aubyn's novels.
