Is Jack Nicholson the most successful actor in the history of movies?
Anyone who wants to become an actor is obligated to carry at least a little bit of an ego, but it takes supreme self-confidence for any thespian to declare themselves as the most successful to ever do it.
To be fair, there aren’t many people who would even contemplate making such a lofty claim, and of those who are, there are even less who could back it up. Fortunately, Jack Nicholson has the sort of career that makes it far from being an outlandish statement, and he even pulled out the receipts to justify his position.
As the single most-nominated male actor in the history of the Academy Awards, with 12 nods and three victories to his name, Nicholson will forever be part of the conversation whenever it comes to naming the greatest of all time. Coupled with his back catalogue of classics and proven bankability, he wasn’t even being particularly arrogant when he patted himself on the back.
For some context, the iconic star and legend of the silver screen made his claims to The Independent in 1993, when there had never been such a thing as a billion-dollar hit. In fact, Nicholson saluted his drawing power just months before Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park came mighty close on its way to becoming the highest-grossing release in history at the time.
These days, the numbers have been obscured by franchises to such an extent that Chris Pratt, Vin Diesel, and Zoe Saldaña rank among the top top-earning actors ever in terms of the cumulative box office tallies amassed throughout their entire careers. No offence to any of them, but they’re not even in the same stratosphere as Nicholson.
At the end of the day, moviemaking is all about turning profits, an arena in which he was confident he excelled to a greater extent than anyone before him. “I can only think of three films out of my 40 which didn’t get their money back; Ironweed and The King of Marvin Gardens. Goin’ South, which I directed in 1978, didn’t make money at the time, but last year I started getting royalties. I am probably the most successful actor in the history of movies, financially speaking.”
Not that he viewed it as the be-all and end-all, though, with Nicholson ruing the fact that being a major movie star and A-list mainstay doesn’t come with the perks he really wanted. “I only wish the world would listen to me more instead of bothering about my teeth and eyebrows,” he mused. “It reminds me of a character in a Saul Bellow story who’s been in a hit show on a Broadway for a year, attracting a huge public, yet he’s taught them nothing.”
There are a thousand different ways to quantify who would be worthy of getting labelled as the single most successful actor the moving image has ever seen, but if anyone chose to ask Nicholson, then at least he already had an answer on hand.
