Born in Klagenfurt, Austria, Nucci was raised in Italy until the age of seven when his family relocated to the United States. He has two sisters, Natalie and Elle. After temporarily living in Queens, New York, the family settled in California's San Fernando Valley, where Nucci graduated from Grant High School. He married Paula Marshall in 2003, and has two daughters. Marshall and Nucci played lovers in the 1997 Bette Midler film That Old Feeling.

 

     Nucci played characters who were unceremoniously killed off in short succession during three different 1990s blockbuster action films — Eraser, The Rock and Titanic — three of which were released within twenty months of one another in 1996 and 1997. His character did manage to survive in the 1993 film Alive: The Miracle of the Andes.