How Gene Hackman played his part in Jack nicholson’s career-defining role: “That was that”
Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman had many things in common. They were both key players in the New Hollywood movement, when cinema went from escapist glamour to grimy realism. They both specialised in playing volcanic characters, whether it was Jack Torrence in The Shining or Detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. And they both earned multiple Oscars.
But that’s where the similarities end because, crucially, part of the appeal of both stars is that they were completely unique. Nicholson’s offbeat charm and Cheshire cat grin were a far cry from Hackman’s everyman pathos. They might have earned universal acclaim during a similar era in cinema history, but they brought completely different energies to the screen.
It’s hard to believe, therefore, that they were once up for the same role. In the 1970s, shortly after Hackman had won an Oscar for The French Connection, he was approached by a very young Michael Douglas, who was producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It was his dad, Kirk, who had got the ball rolling. The elder Douglas had been desperate to play the main character, Randle McMurphy, a patient at a mental institution who helps his fellow patients stage a revolt against their dictatorial overlords. However, he soon discovered that director Miloš Forman thought he was too old for the part.
Resigned to his age, Kirk Douglas handed the reins to his son, who set about finding the perfect Randle. He shot for the stars, in both the literal and figurative sense. Top of his list was Marlon Brando, who, after The Godfather, was on top of the Hollywood pyramid. He turned him down. Then, he went after Hackman, who had only won one Oscar at that point but was still a pretty big player in the industry. He also turned him down.
Nicholson was at a very different point in his career. He was in his mid-thirties and was just breaking through as a star. A string of attention-grabbing roles in the movies Five Easy Pieces and Carnal Knowledge had him on the precipice of greatness, but he had yet to become the legendary Jack Nicholson that we know today. Remembering the casting process, Michael Douglas told Deadline that he had been hopeful that Foreman might reconsider casting his dad when Brando and Hackman passed on the script, but that it was not meant to be.
“Hal Ashby showed us some outtakes of Jack Nicholson from [the 1973 comedy-drama] The Last Detail and that was that,” he said. Although he might not have envisioned Nicholson in the lead at first, Douglas quickly recognised that everything had worked out even better than he’d imagined. “We knew what we had was incredible,” he said. “I could show you a ten-minute reaction scene of Jack’s, just his reaction in the group therapy section, and you would watch it mesmerised.”
It became Nicholson’s definitive breakthrough, the movie that turned him into an icon. He won his first Oscar for his performance as Randle and was launched to the same level of success and acclaim as the actors who had turned down the role.
