Five performances that prove Jack Nicholson is a genius
Even though he never formally or officially announced his retirement, Jack Nicholson hasn’t been seen on-screen since the release of the 2010 romantic comedy How Do You Know, making it exceedingly unlikely that audiences will ever get the chance to see him star in a brand new project.
Of course, his status as one of the finest talents to ever grace the silver screen was secured long ago, with Nicholson’s list of accolades comparable to anybody who’s ever set foot in Hollywood. Three Academy Award wins from 12 nominations and six Golden Globes from 17 nods barely even begins to cover the accomplishments of a career that saw him renowned as one of the best in the business ever since first breaking out in the 1960s.
There’s no doubt been many an offer made to try and coax him out of his self-imposed exile, but the chances of that happening have grown slimmer by the year. Fortunately, Nicholson has left behind one of the most impressive on-screen legacies in the history of Tinseltown.
Having been responsible for a slew of performances that run the gamut from hilarious and heart-breaking to ferocious and frightening, the debate has raged for decades over which of Nicholson’s star turns can be held in higher esteem than the rest. However, there are a select few that can lay claim to displaying his unmistakable and inarguable genius for a variety of reasons.
Five genius Jack Nicholson performances:
5. The Joker (Batman, Tim Burton, 1989)
The genius of Jack Nicholson’s performance as the Joker isn’t simply limited to its on-screen merits – with the Clown Prince of Crime both leveraging the actor’s off-screen persona as a wildman and hellraiser to delightfully exaggerated effect – but the way in which it also completely revolutionised the industry’s monetary hierarchy.
Essentially dialling his real-life personality way past 11, Nicholson’s Joker inhales the scenery and plays to the back rows in terms of bravura showmanship while also projecting genuine menace and an unsettling thousand-yard stare that offers regular reminders the makeup-caked villain is more than just the grandstanding, hammy counterpoint to Michael Keaton’s grounded, introspective Caped Crusader.
Sacrificing his usual $10million salary in favour of receiving a cut of the box office and merchandising profits also saw him secure the biggest-ever payday any star had received for a single role after Batman ended up rolling in cash on all fronts, setting the template his A-list contemporaries still follow to this day. Even now, it remains one of the most iconic marriages of actor and character the superhero genre has ever seen.
4. Jack Torrance (The Shining, Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s relentless drive for perfectionism seemed ill-at-ease with Nicholson’s unrestrained style both on-camera and off, but it turned out to be a match made in heaven when the immaculately constructed chamber piece instantly infiltrated pop culture and refused to leave, largely driven by the leading man’s increasingly-unhinged turn as Jack Torrance.
Conceptually, thematically, and even aesthetically, The Shining almost operates in an entirely different reality to Nicholson’s maniacal turn, which in turn only served to enhance the quality of the end product. Everything about the film is cerebral, chilling, foreboding, and laden with tension, making it all the more jarring when Nicholson explodes into fits of rage that regularly puncture the eerie silence.
There’s no other actor in the business who could have delivered this exact performance in this exact movie and pulled it off without torpedoing the carefully curated tone Kubrick sought to achieve, which is a testament to Nicholson fully understanding and embracing the assignment.
3. Jerry Black (The Pledge, Sean Penn, 2001)
Never singled out or heralded as one of Nicholson’s most memorable or career-defining projects, Sean Penn’s hauntingly bleak mystery thriller The Pledge nonetheless came at a pivotal moment in Nicholson’s decades-long existence as a public-facing A-list superstar.
For a long time, the actor’s on-screen choices came laden with the baggage and reputation he’d carried around with him, further blurring the lines between his larger-than-life status and his merits as an acclaimed thespian. Here, Nicholson sheds every ounce of himself to do the one thing many of his critics seemed willing to forget he was immensely capable of: understatement and subtlety.
Nicholson’s Jerry Black vows to honour a promise he made to the parents of a murdered child, becoming consumed by that single goal as his obsession gradually chips away at his gruff and grizzled demeanour, with each new development in the case peeling away another layer until he’s stripped entirely bare.
2. J. J. ‘Jake’ Gittes (Chinatown, Roman Polanski, 1974)
Appearing in every single scene of Chinatown, it’s hardly a coincidence that Nicholson gives one of the greatest performances of all time in a movie that acquired similar status. The actor projects contained fury, cynicism, self-confidence, and unbridled tenacity while leaving cavernous room to make the most of screenwriter Robert Towne’s loquacious and silken dialogue.
In the broadest terms, an ode to the halcyon days of Hollywood noir that’s both reflective of its 1937 setting and 1974 release on a thematic and societal level, the rampant corruption and depravity running through Los Angeles pushes Nicholson’s Jake Gittes to the personal, physical, and psychological brink.
Oftentimes downbeat without sacrificing an ounce of his natural charisma, bringing the protagonist of Chinatown to life required a balancing act that was every bit as deft as it was complex, one that Nicholson pulled off with the greatest of ease when the cameras were rolling, at least. He’d risen to prominence through a string of acclaimed turns, but this was arguably the one that elevated him from elite-tier actor to genius level.
1. Randall P. McMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Milos Forman, 1975)
The part of a statutory rapist with a history of assault who pretends to be mentally ill for the sake of being transferred to a psychiatric institution comes across on paper as unlikeable to the point of being irredeemable. Of course, Nicholson makes a mockery of that perception by turning Randall P. McMurphy into the anti-authority figurehead who wins over both his fellow patients and the audience by mounting a multi-pronged offensive against the domineering Nurse Ratched.
Assuming he’s in for an easy ride, having dodged the prospect of hard labour to atone for his crimes, McMurphy gets more than he bargained for when his worldview is fundamentally altered by his experiences, a sentiment that tragically applies right up to the character’s final moments.
Winning his first Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest cemented Nicholson’s arrival as one of the brightest lights the acting profession had seen in a long time. A multi-faceted turn that required a sledgehammer-like approach to the story’s more rousing moments and palpable emotion to inform its affecting intimacy, McMurphy was every bit as combustible and volcanic as the actor’s headline-grabbing antics away from his day job, which in turn explains why it proved to be such a match made in cinematic heaven.
