Rick Van Nutter was born in Pomona, California and entered film work as a location manager/assistant director while living in the Hawaian Islands. Later he traveled to Africa as a production manager and stopped off in Rome on his way home and decided to stay for awhile. The following year while working as a location manager for a film company he was asked to take a part in the film and caught the acting bug and from then on spent the rest of his life in front of the cameras
The third actor to play CIA man "Felix Leiter" in the James Bond
series (Thunderball (1965)).
There's much speculation that he played a character (albeit using a different name) in the notorious film, Inchon (1981) (which was directed by Terence Young who collaborated with Van Nutter before).