The Full Biography
Jack Nicholson. Actor. The Neptune kid who made a grin into the New Hollywood’s weather, then became a man who no longer needed to leave the house to be the still.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in a mental ward, or an axe in a door, or the Joker in greasepaint, or a grin that has already decided you are the joke. What the still cannot show is John Joseph Nicholson of Neptune, New Jersey, a boy raised by people he thought were his parents who were not, in the way the family story broke, and a life of three Oscars, a Lakers seat, and a long quiet in which the grin retired before the man did.
He was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune. The household on the Jersey Shore was a closed room with the lights on. Ethel May Nicholson, whom he called Mud, raised him. June, whom he called his sister, was in the house and then on the road as a showgirl. The man of the house, Donald Furcillo-Rose, was not a constant. What the boy was not told — and would not be told until a Time reporter laid the documents on a table in 1974, when he was already a star — is that June was his mother and Ethel May was his grandmother. He has not made a press tour of it. It belongs in the file because it is the first house. He learned it when the grin was already a climate. He did not turn the first house into a brand.
Manasquan High School. A year at the Player’s Ring in Los Angeles after he went west in 1954, chasing June, who was already in California. He worked in the MGM mailroom, carried other people’s scripts, and took a class with Jeff Corey because Corey would take a kid who had no pedigree and a lot of nerve. He acted in Roger Corman pictures because Corman would hire a kid the majors would not: The Cry Baby Killer (1958), a boy with a gun; small parts that paid in experience and not much else. He wrote when the parts thinned. He wrote The Trip (1967) for Corman and Peter Fonda. He wrote Head (1968) with Bob Rafelson for the Monkees, a wrecking ball aimed at a television product, which is a joke only if you miss that the writer already understood product. He waited. The wait was a decade.
The door was not a studio test. It was a low-budget road picture that needed someone who could talk.
Easy Rider (1969), for Dennis Hopper, put him in the back of a chopped bike as George Hanson, an ACLU lawyer who has already had a drink and has not yet had the last one. He is on screen for a stretch, not the whole picture, and he steals it without winking. The Academy nominated him for supporting actor. He was thirty-two. The New Hollywood had been looking for a face that did not look hired by the old one. The grin arrived as if it had been waiting in a mailroom for the right year.
Five Easy Pieces (1970), again with Rafelson, is the first leading-man monument. Robert Eroica Dupea, an oil-rigger who used to play concert piano, a man who cannot order toast in a diner without starting a war. The chicken-salad speech is the folk object. The piano in the back of a moving truck is the life. Nicholson played class as a wound, not a costume. The Academy nominated him for Best Actor. He did not yet have the statue. He had the weather.
Carnal Knowledge (1971), for Mike Nichols, opposite Art Garfunkel and Ann-Margret, is a cold comedy about what men do with women when they have been taught nothing else. The Last Detail (1973), for Hal Ashby, put him in Navy whites as a lifer escorting a kid to the brig, a shore-leave picture that is also a sentence. Chinatown (1974), for Roman Polanski, is the 1970s peak: J.J. Gittes, a bandage on the nose, a Los Angeles water plot, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, and a last line that taught a generation how a city actually works. He is a private detective who thinks he is hard enough. The picture proves he is not. The Academy nominated him again. The statue still waited.
Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975) took him to Europe as a reporter who trades identities and then has to live inside the trade. It is not the picture the fandom quotes. It is the picture that shows he would leave the grin at customs if a director asked. The same year, Miloš Forman cast him as Randle Patrick McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He is a convict who would rather do time in a ward than a cell, and who teaches a room of men to vote for a World Series they will not be allowed to watch. Louise Fletcher is Nurse Ratched. Will Sampson is the Chief. The picture swept the five major Oscars. Nicholson’s first statue was for a man who will not behave and still loses. That is the key that fits more of his work than the axe does.
The Missouri Breaks (1976) with Marlon Brando was a western that could not hold two weathers. Goin’ South (1978) was his own directing job, a comedy in the dirt. Then Stanley Kubrick hired him for The Shining (1980). Jack Torrance, a writer who takes a winter job and a bottle and an axe. Shelley Duvall is Wendy. Danny Lloyd is the boy who sees. “Here’s Johnny” is a Tonight Show steal shouted through a broken door, and it attached itself to him the way “Moon River” attached itself to Hepburn — a costume the public will not take off him. He played the break as a grin that had nowhere left to go. Kubrick made him do the takes. The takes are the performance.
He kept working at a pitch most stars cannot hold. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) with Jessica Lange. Reds (1981), for Warren Beatty, as Eugene O’Neill, a supporting turn that is all whiskey and waste. Terms of Endearment (1983), for James L. Brooks, as Garrett Breedlove, a retired astronaut next door to Shirley MacLaine, brought the second Oscar — supporting this time, a man who will sleep with you and still show up at the hospital. Prizzi’s Honor (1985) for John Huston, a Mafia comedy with Kathleen Turner and Anjelica Huston. Heartburn (1986) with Meryl Streep. The Witches of Eastwick (1987) as a devil who enjoys the part. Ironweed (1987) with Streep again, a bum in Albany, another nomination. Batman (1989), for Tim Burton, made the Joker a summer product and a paycheck the size of a small studio. He took the money. He did not pretend the greasepaint was McMurphy.
A Few Good Men (1992) gave him Colonel Nathan Jessup and a courtroom speech the culture still recites as if it were a founding document. “You can’t handle the truth” is the folk object. The performance under it is a man who believes the country needs him more than it needs the law. Hoffa (1992), for DeVito. Wolf (1994). As Good as It Gets (1997), again for Brooks, as Melvin Udall, a novelist with a diagnosis and a dog, opposite Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear, brought the third Oscar — Best Actor, the third time, a record for a man in that category that still stands in the folk count. He was sixty. The grin had become an instrument he could play against itself.
About Schmidt (2002) put him in a Winnebago as a man who has retired from an insurance company and from a marriage, a dry, Midwestern turn that earned another nomination and almost no grinning. Something’s Gotta Give (2003) with Diane Keaton asked him to be a music executive who has finally met a woman his own age. The Departed (2006), for Martin Scorsese, as Frank Costello, a Boston mob boss built on Whitey Bulger’s weather, is a late monster. The picture won Best Picture. He was not handed a fourth statue for it. The existing folk version that files The Departed as his third Oscar is wrong. The third statue is Melvin Udall. Costello is the encore. The Bucket List (2007) with Morgan Freeman. How Do You Know (2010), again for Brooks, opposite Reese Witherspoon and Owen Wilson, is the last feature. He played a baseball man whose body and judgment were both going. Then he stopped flooding the market with Jack.
With my sunglasses on, I’m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I’m fat and 60.Jack Nicholson
The turn is the refusal to keep sending the grin out as a product. A lot of his peers became franchises of themselves. He became scarce. The family fact sits under the scarcity like a first room he does not open for tourists. He married Sandra Knight in 1962; they had a daughter, Jennifer; they divorced in 1968. He had a long public life with Anjelica Huston that ended in a very public break. He had children with Winnie Hollman and with Rebecca Broussard — Lorraine and Raymond among them — and he has not given the columns the long last marriage they wanted. He has been, for a generation, the American idea of a man who will not behave and will still get the close-up. Then he decided the close-up was optional.
Six things most people never knew
- The first house was a story that broke when he was already famous. Sister as mother. Grandmother as mother. He learned it from a reporter’s file in 1974. He did not make it a brand.
- Corman and the mailroom are the conservatory. Not a sudden Easy Rider. A decade of bits, scripts, and waiting.
- Three Oscars, a pile of nominations. McMurphy, Breedlove, Melvin Udall. The grin is the folk object. The pile is the file. The Departed is not the third statue.
- Chinatown and the ward are the 1970s monuments. Polanski, Forman. The axe is a Kubrick climate. All three are him. None is the whole throat.
- The Lakers seat is a civic still. Courtside at the Forum and then Staples, for decades. A man who stopped flooding pictures and did not stop being in the building.
- The quiet is a decision, not only an age. He is living. He does not owe another Joker. He has not been sending one.
The children have had to share a father who is a poster and a man who likes a private table. Friends from the 1970s sets describe a professional who was prepared, generous to a scene partner, and finished with a false line. The Nicholson in a doorway at the Forum is the same man without the call time.
The later years
Home, after the last Brooks picture, was the house on Mulholland Drive that had already been the house for decades — a ridge above Los Angeles, a driveway the columns treated as a mystery, a man who could see the basin and did not have to go down into it to remain Jack. He kept the Lakers. For more than thirty seasons he sat courtside in a dark suit, the grin aimed at referees and at Jack Kent Cooke’s old building and then at Staples Center, a civic object the city filed next to the Hollywood sign. When the team moved and the body stiffened, the seat thinned. The city still looks for him in the timeout. That looking is part of the job he no longer does.
He did not vanish in a press conference. He simply stopped taking the parts that required the old velocity. Offers arrived. Sequels were mentioned. A Joker return was a rumor the internet kept warm. He did not feed it. He had already played the clown for Burton and been paid like a studio. He had already played the colonel, the detective, the inmate, the devil, the writer, the neighbor, the boss. Repeating any of them for a streaming service would have been a product. He has said, in the years when he still sat for a camera, that he did not want to become a man who worked because the town expected the grin. The town expected it anyway. He let the town wait.
The private table held. Jennifer, Lorraine, Ray, and the rest of the household have had a father who is also a still. He has been seen at a restaurant, at a memorial, at a Lakers night when the night still interested him. He has not become a late-night guest who explains McMurphy to a host who was not born when Forman shot the ward. He has not written the confession book. The 1974 family fact sits in the biographies; he has not toured it. Anjelica Huston’s pages and other people’s pages do some of that work. His work, in these years, is absence. Absence, done on purpose, is a kind of last performance.
He is in his eighties. The axe is a clip. The greasepaint is a clip. The diner speech is a clip. The house is the life. Neptune is the first room. Mulholland is the one he chose and kept. Friends who still see him describe a man who can talk about a Laker or a director and then end the evening before it becomes an appearance. The public treats the quiet as a mystery, or as a decline, or as a story that needs a final interview to close. It is also a schedule. A man who spent fifty years showing up at call time is allowed to stop showing up. The grin retired before the man did. That was the point.
What he has not done is as specific as what he did. No farewell tour. No prestige-television patriarch hired to wink at McMurphy. No branded memoir timed to an anniversary of The Shining. The pictures remain in circulation without his help: Gittes with the cut nose, McMurphy on the ward bus, Torrance in the snow, Jessup on the stand, Melvin with the dog. A new generation finds them on a laptop and assumes the man who made them is already a monument. He is not a monument. He is a neighbor on a ridge who used to be the weather. The neighbor is the chapter. The weather is the catalog.
After the spotlight moved
It moved because he moved it. Every rebellious close-up still pays him a tax. Every “he’s crazy” performance still steals the ward. The family fact is in the biographies. The seat is the correction. The scarcity is the art of the last act.
He came out of Neptune, learned a first house late, waited in a mailroom, grinned through a decade, took three statues, sat down at basketball, and stopped flooding the market with himself. If you only remember the door, you have the still. If you remember the first house, Chinatown, and the quiet, you have him.
Portrait: Georges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons