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Jack Nicholson

John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is a highly successful, iconic American method actor known for his often dark, comedic portrayals of neurotic characters.

He has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times (winning 3 of them), more than any other male actor, and second only to Meryl Streep (who has 13 nominations and 2 wins) in total nominations.

He has also won seven Golden Globe Awards and he received a Kennedy Center Honors in 2001.

Personal life

Nicholson was born at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City to June Frances Nicholson (alias June Nilson), a showgirl of English and Irish descent who had previously married an Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) six months earlier in Elkton, Maryland, on October 16, 1936. Elkton was a town known for its "quickie" marriages. However, Furcillo was already married, and, although he offered to take care of the child, June's mother Ethel insisted that she bring up the baby, partly so that June could pursue her dancing career.

Jack was therefore brought up believing his grandparents John (a department store window dresser in Asbury Park, New Jersey) and Ethel May Nicholson, a hairdresser and beautician and amateur artist in Neptune, New Jersey were his parents. He attended high school at nearby Manasquan High School, where a drama award was ultimately named in his honor. Nicholson only discovered that his parents were actually his grandparents and his sister was in fact his mother in 1974 after being informed by a Time Magazine journalist who was doing a feature on him, while he was filming The Fortune with Stockard Channing. By this time both his mother and grandmother had died (in 1963 and 1970, respectively). Nicholson has stated he doesn't know who his father is, saying "Only Ethel and June knew and they never told anybody". Although Donald Furcillo claimed to be Nicholson's father and to have committed bigamy by marrying June, biographer Patrick McGilligan, who wrote Jack's Life (published in December 1995) asserted that Eddie King, June's manager, may be the father and other (see

) sources have suggested that June Nicholson was unsure of who the father was. Jack Nicholson has chosen not to have a DNA test or to pursue the matter. Although Nicholson is personally anti-abortion, he is pro-choice: "I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life."

In his adult personal life, Nicholson has been notorious for his inability to "settle down". He has four children by three different mothers despite only being married once (Jennifer Nicholson with his now ex-wife Sandra Knight, Caleb Goddard with Susan Anspach, his Five Easy Pieces co-star, and Lorraine and Raymond Nicholson with Rebecca Broussard). He has been romantically linked to numerous actresses and models for decades. Nicholson's longest relationship was for 17 years to actress Anjelica Huston, the daughter of the legendary director John Huston, but that relationship ended when the news broke that Nicholson had sired a child by Rebecca Broussard.

Jack Nicholson has stated that he is not an atheist, but he "has claimed that he is not at all religious and that the only times he prays is during jogging"

Acting career

Nicholson started his career as an actor, writer, and producer, working for and with Roger Corman. This included his screen debut in The Cry Baby Killer (1958), where he played a juvenile delinquent who panics after shooting two other teenagers, and The Little Shop of Horrors, in which he had a small role as a masochistic dental patient.

His work on the LSD-fueled screenplay for The Trip, which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, led to his first big break in Easy Rider (1969). In Easy Rider, Nicholson played hard-drinking lawyer George Hanson for which he received his first Oscar nomination.

A Best Actor nomination came the following year for his persona-defining role in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which includes his famous chicken salad dialogue about getting what you want.

Other early movies he is known for include Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973), Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he received his first Oscar, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Jack Nicholson won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Terms of Endearment (1983).

The 1989 Batman, where Nicholson played the chillingly evil, almost nihilistic supervillain The Joker, was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal earned Nicholson about $50 million.

Nicholson later advised close friend Danny DeVito to take the part of the Penguin in the sequel Batman Returns as a potential investment.

For his role as hotheaded Col. Nathan R. Jessep in A Few Good Men (1992), a dark movie about a murder in a US Marine Corps unit, he received yet another nomination by the Academy.

This film contains Nicholson's "You can't handle the truth!" scene, which has since become widely known and imitated.

Nicholson would go on to win his next Oscar for his role as the neurotic lead in the romance As Good as It Gets (1997).

In About Schmidt (2002), Nicholson portrayed a retired Omaha, Nebraska insurance man who questions his own life and the death of his wife shortly afterward.

The deeply emotional, slow film stands in sharp contrast to many of his previous roles. In the comedy Anger Management, he plays an aggressive therapist assigned to help overly pacifist Adam Sandler.

His most recent film is the 2003 Something's Gotta Give as an aging playboy who falls for the mother (Diane Keaton) of his young girlfriend.

Not all of Nicholson's performances have been well-received. He was nominated for Razzie Awards as worst actor for Man Trouble (1992) and Hoffa (1992). His portrayal of the American President in Mars Attacks (1996) was widely criticised for being over-the-top and unfunny.

Nicholson will return to villainous form as a tough Boston Irish Mob boss presiding over Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006).

Trivia

Nicholson is also a well-known and highly visible fan of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers; he has courtside seats. It is in his contract that he does not film movies during Lakers games. When he is at a televised Lakers game, he is invariably sought out for celebrity camera shots during one or more breaks in the game. While he used to be often accompanied by a girlfriend, he can usually be seen with one of his young children now.

In 1998, after Nicholson visited Cuba and had a three hour conversation with Fidel Castro, he told Daily Variety: "He is a genius". According to former Cuban intelligence officer Delfin Fernandez, Nicholson's hotel room, in Cuba, was bugged with both video and audio recording devices at the instruction of Castro.

He was asked, along with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman to play Al Pacino's famed role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather.

He is known to his friends as Pickles.

He was friends with famous Gonzo Journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who has a humorous account of himself pranking Jack Nicholson at his home by placing a thawing elk's heart on his doorstep, playing sounds of a recorded pig slaughter, and firing guns in the air, in his last book before he died: Kingdom of Fear.

Nicholson's height is 177cm (5 ft 9 in).

According to movie producer Robert Evans in the E! True Hollywood Story on Nicholson, Evans was looking to get Chinatown off the ground and they were in need of a male actor. Evans was intent on finding an unknown who could play the role when Nicholson stepped into an office to deliver a package. When Nicholson departed the office with his devilish grin, it caught Evans' eye who went right after Nicholson and told him about Chinatown with an offer of $10,000 to star in the film. Nicholson told Evans that he was paying alimony along with a child to support, if the producer could raise it to $15,000. Evans offered him $12,500 when Nicholson hugged Evans right on the spot.

He lived by friend Danny DeVito in the same New Jersey neighborhood during their early years. The basis for DeVito's decision to play the Penguin in Batman Returns was partly influenced by Nicholson, who advised his friend to take the part because of its potential financial success. Nicholson's participation in Batman (1989) is one of Hollywood's most well known success stories when the actor signed an agreement for owning a part of the film's profits, which netted him somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000,000 to $60,000,000 US dollars.

Female Co-stars

June Squibb

Academy Awards and nominations

1969 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Easy Rider

1970 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - Five Easy Pieces

1973 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - The Last Detail

1974 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - Chinatown

1975 - Won - Best Actor in a Leading Role - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

1981 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Reds

1983 - Won - Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Terms of Endearment

1985 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - Prizzi's Honor

1987 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - Ironweed

1992 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Supporting Role - A Few Good Men

1997 - Won - Best Actor in a Leading Role - As Good As It Gets

2002 - Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role - About Schmidt

External links

Extensive biography at Tiscali UK

Ancestry of Jack Nicholson

Unofficial fansite for Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson prank calls

Jack Nicholson Online - Latest news and info about Jack Nicholson

Adherents.com

Marriage certificate of Jack's mother

Photos of Jack's mother and possible father

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