HE is the original Hollywood hellraiser, the ultimate screen legend and the
world’s most notorious womaniser.
So Jack Nicholson’s announcement that he has quietly decided to bow out of
movies has sent seismic shocks through the celebrity world.
But it came as no surprise to me — though not for the reasons that have been
circulating in Tinseltown.
I spent an afternoon with Jack in New York to talk about his career. The
interview was meant to last 15 minutes, but more than two and a half hours
later he was still talking.
According to Hollywood reports, the reason for 76-year-old Jack’s retirement
was “memory loss” and an inability to learn lines, though his friends have
dismissed the claim.
He was as sharp as a tack when I met him, quoting from French philosopher
Camus and giving facts and figures on America’s drug wars.
He quipped: “I have a mathematician’s brain. It looks at everything
mathematically, including relationships. It’s all statistics and laws of
probability.”
He talked about everything from his regrets about women, how he felt he had
lost his sex appeal, sleeping in trees in his crazy, drug-addled youth — and
trimming hair from his ears.
And hinting at his decision to leave Tinseltown behind, Jack admitted he could
see himself giving up work.
He said: “I’m not going to work until the day I die, that’s not why I started
this. I mean, I’m not driven.
“I was driven — but I’m not, I don’t have to be out there any
more. In fact, there’s part of me that never really liked being out there.
“I learnt how to function within ‘out there’. Then you get older, you change.
I mean, I’m not a loner, I’m not a recluse, but I don’t need all that any
more. I don’t enjoy it, simple as that.”
In the 1970s Jack mixed with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison of
The Doors. He dated Joni Mitchell, Michelle Pfeiffer and Anjelica Huston and
was known as “the man no woman could resist”.
But as he talked, and blew great clouds from his cigar over the No Smoking
sign in the hotel suite, it was clear the three-times Oscar winner felt his
glory days were over.
He said: “I’m still wild at heart but I’ve hit bio-gravity. I can’t hit on
women in public any more. I didn’t decide this, it just doesn’t feel right
at my age.
“If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they went was for a
chance to see women. A lot of me being an actor was about that, and about
me.
“There were points in my life when I felt oddly irresistible to women. I’m not
in that state now, which makes me sad.
“But I so believe that a lot of the improvements in my character have come
through ageing and the diminishing of powers. Some of it isn’t so great,
like the hair that comes and the hair that goes.
“Now I don’t have any hair below my sock line, and that means you’re getting
old, Jackie boy. It comes out of my ears instead. I mean, how many times
have I slashed my earlobes?”
Besides Michael Caine, Jack is the only actor to be nominated for an Oscar in
every decade of his career. He has twice won the Best Actor award, for One
Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975 and for As Good As It Gets in 1997.
But he said: “People have an idea of me which is not the reality. It’s not a
good thing. Like on set — I’m an actor like every other actor.
“Most times I can think of other actors who would be better in the part. I
worry. I worry from the moment I take a job, I worry about how I’m going to
do it, if I can do it.
“It happens every time and I get myself into this state then I walk on set and
the director says, ‘Roll’ and all of a sudden all of it disappears, and it’s
all happening and I relax.”
After 9/11 Jack vowed only to do comedies and in the past decade he decided
never to appear in a 3D blockbuster.
He said: “The movie business is the greatest business but I only want to do
films that move people, films about emotions and people.
“I had the most chilling thought that maybe people in their twenties and
thirties don’t actually want to be moved any more. They may want just to see
more bombs, more explosions, because that is what they have grown up with.
And I’ll never do that type of movie.”
Far from complaining of failing health, Jack laughed off the idea that his
drink and drug days had damaged him. Keith Richards once said: “The only
person I’ve ever had to say, ‘I have to go home now’ to is Jack Nicholson.”
But Jack said: “Contrary to opinion, however sated I got, I always looked
after myself. I’m in good shape — a little stout, but healthy. And I’ve done
it all.
“I’ve woken up in trees, I’ve woken up almost hanging off cliffs, but I’ve
always known how to sort myself out.”
His one regret, he said, was never having had a lasting relationship, despite
a long-term affair with Anjelica Huston. Talking about their split in 1989,
Jack said: “That annihilated me. I’m kind of childish emotionally and I did
make a mistake in the way I handled it.
“But I may have made a mistake but I don’t want to go back and correct it. I
would rather deal with it.
“I’ve had everything a man could ask for but I don’t know if anyone could say
I’m successful with affairs of the heart.
“I don’t know why, I did the very best I could. I would love that one last
romance, a real romance, but I’m not very realistic about it happening. What
I can’t deny is my yearning.
“No woman has ever recognised what I say as being legitimate. They don’t trust
me. They think of my reputation — Jack the Jumper — so I’m dammed by what
women think.”
At 76, Jack is happiest when he is at home in Hollywood’s Mulholland Drive.
He continues to date — and is not put off by boob jobs. He said: “You don’t
want to go around saying, ‘Hey, I don’t go out with people with new lips or
ti*s or ass.’ If they can fool me I’m happy to be fooled. I’d never complain
about my life, even though I’d really like a mate.
“It’s not like I’m starving for company, I have a few very good lady friends,
but there’s only a certain amount of times a woman wants to see you and
never go out for dinner.
“I got tired of arguing with women about going to have dinners so I hired a
cook. The food is better at my house.
“But still, a lot of times ladies want to go out, and I’m happier in my dinky
little house.”
History of Jack the lad
AS Jack Nicholson’s film career went stellar, the one casualty seems to have
been his love life.
He was married to Sandra Knight from 1962 to 1968 and they had one daughter,
Jennifer, born in 1963.
The year after his marriage ended, Jack had his big acting break in 1969’s
Easy Rider.
Over the following years he was romantically linked with a number of actresses
such as Michelle Phillips, formerly of the pop group The Mamas & The
Papas, Janice Dickinson, Rachel Ward and Lara Flynn Boyle.
In 1973 he settled down with actress Anjelica Huston.
At around 17 years, it was to be his longest relationship to date, and as he
became the talk of Tinseltown for roles in Chinatown and Cuckoo’s Nest, the
pair became Hollywood’s cool couple.
Jack has three more children – a daughter, Honey, born in 1981 from a
relationship with Danish actress Winnie Hollman, and his two youngest,
Lorraine and Raymond, born to actress Rebecca Broussard in 1990 and 1992.
