Jack Nicholson reveals the off-camera secret behind his ‘Chinatown’ performance
Few actors have amassed as many legendary roles as the great Jack Nicholson. Jack Torrance in The Shining, The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Col. Nathan R. Jessep in A Few Good Men, Costello in The Departed, the characters Nicholson has brought to life across his immense career are some of the greatest to ever grace a screen. However you slice it, he is one of the greats.
If all that wasn’t enough, there’s also the small matter of Chinatown. Released in 1974, this Roman Polanski-directed noir mystery stars Nicholson as JJ ‘Jake’ Gittes, a private detective who ends up caught in the middle of the infamous California water wars in the 1930s. The film is almost unanimously regarded as a masterpiece, a tense, slick affair with all-time great performances from Nicholson and co-star Faye Dunaway. It was nominated for 11 Oscars and, in 1991, selected for preservation by the US National Film Registry.
The villain of the piece is Noah Cross, a shady and deplorable businessman played to great effect by John Huston. As Nicholson explained to The New York Times Magazine, his real-life relationship with Huston played a big part in why they worked so well together on screen.
“One of the secrets of Chinatown is that there was a kind of triangular offstage situation,” he said. “I had just started going with John Huston’s daughter, which the world might not have been aware of, but it could actually feed the moment-to-moment reality of my scene with him.” Nicholson is referring to Anjelica Huston, a famous actor in her own right. The couple first got together in 1973 and stayed a couple until 1990. This must have really helped when her father had to deliver the line “Are you sleeping with her?” to Nicholson in the film.
John Huston was a formidable enough figure before Nicholson started dating his daughter. Alongside his acting accomplishments, he also directed a number of iconic films, including The African Queen and The Maltese Falcon. He won two Oscars for his work on The Treasure of Sierra Madre, on the same night that his father Walter won ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his role in the film. When Anjelica picked up ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for her part in Prizzi’s Honor, which her father also directed, she became the third generation of her family to take home a statuette.
Nicholson’s relationship with Huston inadvertently became tied up with Polanski’s 19777 arrest for sexual assault. Huston dropped in on Nicholson’s home unannounced when she found the director with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. Polanski had supposedly been photographing Geimer for Vogue, but, one day later, he was taken in custody by the police. This incident led to the director fleeing the United States and seeking sanctuary in Europe. He remains in exile there to this day.
Huston and Nicholson’s on-off relationship is one of the most famous in Hollywood history. Despite multiple excursions with other people, the two kept returning to each other until they finally called it a day. It might not have lasted forever, but it did fuel one of Nicholson’s greatest ever performances and one of his most cherished films, so you have to say it was worth it.
