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Jack Nicholson - Biography

Actor, director, screenwriter. Born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune, New Jersey. A veteran of numerous Hollywood B pictures whose versatile talent was finally recognized in the 70's after many years of relative anonymity. Raised by his mother, the owner of a beauty parlor, after his father, an alcoholic, deserted the family, he chanced on films at the age of 17 during a trip to California to visit a sister. He started out as an office boy at MGM's cartoon department and after training as an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theater, began performing on the stage and in TV soap operas. He made his first film appearance in 1958. playing the lead in a Roger Corman cheapie, The Cry Baby Killer, and subsequently appeared in other quickie horror, motorcycle, and action films by Corman and other directors operating on the fringes of the industry's mainstream. Collaborating with another Corman protégé, Monte Hellman, he soon began producing and writing some of these films. For reasons of economy, several of their films were made in the Philippines. After years of frustration and disappointments, Nicholson got his big break when he was called in to replace Rip Torn in Easy Rider (1969). He made the most of the small role of a dropout lawyer and for his effort received the first of several Oscar nominations.

In the ensuing years, Nicholson emerged as one of the American screen's most intriguing personalities, a multifaceted, versatile performer, capable not only of interpreting a wide range of roles, but also of changing his appearance from film to film. He turned in an exception, complex performance in Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (Oscar nomination, 1970), then went on to display his enigmatic personality and uncommon acting skill in such disparate films as Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971), Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (Oscar nomination, 1973), Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975). The one common link among most of his roles has been the characterization of the eternal outsider, the sardonic drifter who bucks the system. After two successive also-ran positions in the Academy Awards race, he won the Best Actor Oscar for Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), in which he once again played an outsider, a free-spirited individualist whose arrival at a hospital's mental ward catalyzes the patients' lives.

Nicholson went on to register memorable performances in many other films, gaining additional Best Actor Academy Award nominations for Reds (1981), Prizzi's Honor (1985), and Ironweed (1987), a Best Supporting Actor nomination for A Few Good Men (1992), and a Best Supporting Actor award for Terms of Endearment (1983). Equally outstanding recent roles that went unrewarded included those of a delightfully lecherous devil in The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and a demented Joker in Batman (1989).

Nicholson directed several films, starting in 1971, with modest distinction. In 1990 he directed and acted in The Two Jakes, a long-delayed and badly-received sequel to Roman Polanski's Chinatown. The actor-director, whose only marriage (1962-67), to actress Sandra Knight, came early in his career, was for many years the steady companion of actress Anjelica Huston. The father of two children out of wedlock, he has rivaled Warren Beatty for notoriety as a Hollywood lothario.