Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson was born on the 22nd of April, 1937, in New York City, then his mother took him back to her hometown of Neptune, New Jersey, where he was raised by his grandmother, always believing that his own mother was his older sister. Nicholson's mother, June, was a highly talented dancer and showgirl who, by the age of 17, was already making a name with the renowned Earl Carroll Dancers (her stage-name was June Nilson). At 17, she met the handsome, Neapolitan-extracted Don Furcillo-Rose, a charismatic showman who'd later own thoroughbreds and run a chain of beauty parlours. The couple fell deeply in love but disaster quickly struck them when June fell pregnant.

So Jack grew up surrounded by women. There was his mother (grandmother) Ethel, who ran a beauty parlour in the basement. There was his sister (mother), June, and his other sister (aunt) Lorraine. And, for a few years at least, there was the man whose name he was given, Ethel's Irish husband John Joseph Nicholson. He was by all accounts a kind man, a window dresser and sign-writer by trade. He'd take young Jack to the cinema, but also to bars, because John Snr drank heavily. Indeed, he'd be dead from it by 1955.

Young Jack was a happy and very good-looking child. He attended Manasquan High School, in New Jersey, but did not take to his studies. He did, though, star in many school plays and, when 17 and on a trip to California to visit his sister (he does have a real sister - well, a half sister - named Pamela Hawley Liddicoat. There's also Don's daughter Donna Rose), he decided to get into the movies. He worked as a messenger boy for the cartoon unit at MGM, and trained as an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theatre. He found jobs onstage and on TV - in shows such as Bronco, Hawaiian Eye and Tales Of Wells Fargo (in the mid-Sixties he'd also appear as Jaime Angel in Dr Kildare). Then came his first breakthrough when, in 1958, director Roger Corman cast him as the lead in his low-budget The Cry-Baby Killer. Corman, best-known for his camp adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe would soon also cast him as a pain-loving dental patient in Little Shop Of Horrors and, alongside Peter Lorre, in The Raven. Being as Corman would often shoot films back-to-back using the same sets, Nicholson hung around after The Raven, and so got to star with Boris Karloff in The Terror.

Now married to actress Sandra Knight (they'd have a daughter, Jennifer - now Jennifer Norfleet - in 1965, then divorce a year later), with Harry Dean Stanton as his best man, Nicholson took to writing, seeing his Thunder Island filmed in 1963. Then came a relationship with director Monte Hellman, with whom Nicholson made four movies in quick succession, writing both Flight To Fury and Ride In The Whirlwind and co-producing the latter, as well as The Shooting. These last two movies were odd pieces, existential Westerns with winding, thoughtful scripts. Having read widely and consumed an awful lot of drugs, Nicholson was profoundly interested in internal consciousness and the counter-culture, and attempted to squeeze his thinking into the hoary old Western format.

Not for long. Next he went all-out into the mind-expansion business, writing Corman's LSD extravaganza The Trip, putting together The Monkees' weird-out Head and starring in such contemporary rebel flicks as Hells Angels On Wheels. Then it all happened for him. In The Trip, a TV director decides to score some acid and explore his mind. Playing the director was Peter Fonda, the dealer being Dennis Hopper. Now these two had their own project, Easy Rider and, with Rip Torn pulling out at the last, they asked Nicholson to step in as the spirit-soaked Southern lawyer. The movie made him a star, got him Oscar-nominated and launched him on an incredible run of success.

Nicholson was Oscar-nominated again as the disaffected musical prodigy in Five Easy Pieces. Once again as the hard-nosed officer showing young Randy Quaid a good time on his way to jail in The Last Detail. And once AGAIN as streetwise private dick JJ Gittes, taken for a ride by Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Perhaps just as importantly, he also won quite a reputation as a womaniser for his salacious role in the controversial Carnal Knowledge. It was a rep he'd more than live up to.

It was while making his next movie, The Fortune, a fairly zany effort with fellow-stud Warren Beatty, that Nicholson heard the truth about his family. Unfortunately, his real mother had died of cancer back in 1963, and his grandmother had passed away in 1970, some four months before Easy Rider sent her beloved child into the stratosphere. The truth hit him hard. He did call his father, reportedly beginning the conversation with a terse "Hello. I understand you're family", but he did not allow the relationship to blossom. Instead, he went his own way - very much his own way.

First there was the long-awaited Oscar. As Randall McMurphy, the free spirit battling the system in a mental institution in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, he was superb, deservedly taking Best Actor. But, ever the rebel, he would not use his status simply to score the big roles. Indeed, over his career, Nicholson has missed out on some peaches: Michael Corleone in The Godfather, the Robert Redford roles in The Sting and The Great Gatsby, Martin Sheen's in Apocalypse Now, Jon Voight's in Coming Home. First he tested himself against Marlon Brando in the offbeat The Missouri Breaks, then he directed his own Goin' South, featuring Mary Steenburgen in her first major role (he'd actually made his directorial debut back in 1970, with Drive, He Said).

Goin' South was good fun but it didn't do well. Nicholson took time off before reappearing in one of his most famous roles -as Jack Torrance in The Shining ("Heeere's JOHNNY!"). Compelling and utterly overblown, he'd use many of the character traits again in as The Joker in Batman and the devil in The Witches Of Eastwick. He courted controversy once more in Warren Beatty's Commie-friendly Reds (for which he was once more Oscar-nominated) and with his rough'n' racy sex scenes with Jessica Lange in a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

He won another Oscar as a flirty ex-astronaut Garrett Breedlove, attempting to seduce Shirley Maclaine in Terms Of Endearment, a role he'd later reprise in The Evening Star. Then was nominated some more as the hitman in Prizzi's Honour, alongside Angelica Huston, and the sympathetic loser in Ironweed. He'd be nominated yet again as the explosive Colonel Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men ("You can't HANDLE the truth!"), and win once more as the crotchety obsessive-compulsive Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets. In the meantime there was money. Nicholson's movies have taken over $1.25 billion at the box-office, but the figure that's most often quoted is the $60 million he received from his share of 1989's Batman. He must have known something big was on the cards when, in his Cuckoo's Nest Oscar acceptance speech, he thanked Mary Pickford "for being the first actor to get a percentage of her pictures".

Of course, there's also the sex. Despite his 17-year relationship with Anjelica Huston, Nicholson was alleged to have had many, many affairs. She finally left him when he began seeing his daughter's best friend, Rebecca Broussard, with whom he had two children - Lorraine and Raymond (he'd had a son, Caleb Goddard, with actress Susan Anspach, back in 1970). Next came another actress, Lara Flynn Boyle, over 30 years his junior, who he dated secretly until they were involved in a car accident and she fled before the ambulance arrived, the story subsequently being released to the public. There was furthermore the rather nasty case of Christine Sheehan, an ex-prostitute who claimed she went to Nicholson's Hollywood home in 1996 and, when she demanded money for her services, had her head banged repeatedly on the floor. She settled out-of-court for $33,000 but later, claiming her injuries had worsened, went after another half a million. Nicholson contested her claims vehemently.

Next came the critically lauded The Pledge, where Nicholson played a retired cop obsessed with a child-murder case. The film reunited him with director Sean Penn, with whom he also made The Crossing Guard in 1994. And it just kept coming. In About Schmidt, he was lauded once more in the title role of Warren Schmidt, a retired 66-year-old whose wife dies, leading him to go visit his daughter, then marrying into a mid-Western family. Though cantankerous and disapproving, Nicholson's Schmidt was quiet and understated, a far
cry from Melvin Udall. Part comedy, part road movie, part existential tragedy, the movie, directed by Alexander "Election" Payne, saw one of Jack's best ever performances.

Now in his Sixties, Nicholson seemed to alternate between loud, larger-than-life characters, like his duel role of president and extravagant Vegas entrepreneur in Tim Burton's hilarious Mars Attacks!, and ordinary Joes having trouble with onrushing age, like his dodgy wine merchant, botching his one-last-job in 1996's Blood And Wine. And this continued with his follow up to About Schmidt, Anger Management, which saw Adam Sandler wrongly accused of losing his head and sent to an anger management class run by Jack's wholly furious Dr Buddy Rydell.

Filmography

The Bucket List (2007) (filming)
The Departed (2006) .... Frank Costello
Something's Gotta Give (2003) .... Harry Sanborn
Anger Management (2003) .... Dr. Buddy Rydell
About Schmidt (2002) .... Warren Schmidt
The Pledge (2001) .... Jerry Black
As Good as It Gets (1997) .... Melvin Udall
Mars Attacks! (1996) .... President James Dale/Art Land
The Evening Star (1996) .... Garrett Breedlove
Blood and Wine (1996) .... Alex Gates
The Crossing Guard (1995) .... Freddy Gale
Wolf (1994) .... Will Randall
Hoffa (1992) .... James R. 'Jimmy' Hoffa
A Few Good Men (1992) .... Col. Nathan R. Jessep
Man Trouble (1992) .... Eugene Earl Axline, aka Harry Bliss
The Two Jakes (1990) .... J.J. 'Jake' Gittes
Batman (1989) .... Joker/Jack Napier
Ironweed (1987) .... Francis Phelan
Broadcast News (1987) .... Bill Rorich
The Witches of Eastwick (1987) .... Daryl Van Horne
Heartburn (1986) .... Mark Forman
Prizzi's Honor (1985) .... Charley Partanna
Terms of Endearment (1983) .... Garrett Breedlove
The Border (1982) .... Charlie Smith
Reds (1981) .... Eugene O'Neill
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) .... Frank Chambers
The Shining (1980) .... Jack Torrance
Goin' South (1978) .... Henry Lloyd Moon
The Last Tycoon (1976) .... Brimmer
The Missouri Breaks (1976) .... Tom Logan
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) .... Randle Patrick McMurphy
The Fortune (1975) .... Oscar Sullivan aka Oscar Dix
Tommy (1975) .... The Specialist
Professione: reporter (1975) .... David Locke
Chinatown (1974) .... J.J. 'Jake' Gittes
The Last Detail (1973) .... Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky
The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) .... David Staebler
A Safe Place (1971) .... Mitch
Carnal Knowledge (1971) .... Jonathan Fuerst
Five Easy Pieces (1970) .... Robert Eroica Dupea
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) .... Tad Pringle
The Rebel Rousers (1970) .... Bunny
Easy Rider (1969) .... George Hanson
Psych-Out (1968) .... Stoney
Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) .... Poet
The Shooting (1967) .... Billy Spear
Ride in the Whirlwind (1965) .... Wes
Back Door to Hell (1964) .... Burnett
Flight to Fury (1964) .... Jay Wickham
Ensign Pulver (1964) .... Dolan
The Terror (1963) .... Lt. Andre Duvalier
The Raven (1963) .... Rexford Bedlo
The Broken Land (1962) .... Will Brocious
Studs Lonigan (1960) .... Weary Reilly
The Wild Ride (1960) .... Johnny Varron
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) .... Wilbur Force
Too Soon to Love (1960) .... Buddy
The Cry Baby Killer (1958) .... Jimmy Wallace