Nutter was born in 1960. He graduated from Dunedin High School in Dunedin, Florida, in 1978. He subsequently graduated from the University of Miami, where he originally enrolled as a music major.
Nutter has been married to his wife, Birgit, since May, 1987. They have two children, Actress Zoe K. Nutter and Ben Nutter.
He also directed "Replacements", the fourth part of the mini-series Band of Brothers, and shared in that series's Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special. Other directing highlights include "Join the Club", an Emmy-nominated episode of The Sopranos, and the 1998 feature film Disturbing Behavior.
In 2008, LG used Nutter's pilot expertise to create a campaign for its new "Scarlet" line of HDTVs, by creating a promotional clip in the style of a trailer for a TV pilot.
The first sixteen pilots that Nutter directed have all gone to series. This streak was broken in 2011 when CBS chose to not pick up The Doctor.
In 2012, Nutter directed episodes six and seven of Game of Thrones season 2. In 2013, he directed the last two episodes of season 3, including "The Rains of Castamere", with the infamous "Red Wedding" sequence.
In 2014, he returned to the HBO series Game of Thrones to direct episodes 9 and 10 of Season 5. For episode 10, he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.
In September 2017, it was announced that Nutter would return to direct at least two episodes of the eighth season of Game of Thrones, alongside Miguel Sapochnik, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for the remainder of the episodes.
