Jack Nicholson on the role that elevated him to a whole new level
Having forgotten more about acting than most aspiring performers will ever know, Jack Nicholson could have easily decided to coast through the latter years of his career, trading on his legacy as one of the greatest to ever grace the silver screen.
After all, he’d won three Academy Awards and delivered several of cinema’s greatest-ever performances along the way, never mind his scenery-chewing turns in broad crowd-pleasers, his mischievous comic timing, and a legendary habit for hellraising. Of course, he was never one to phone it in, and when he fell out of love with acting, he simply called it quits, with 2010’s dramedy bomb How Do You Know serving as the underwhelming exclamation point on his legacy.
There were some lean periods in between, though, with the time between his iconic turn in Tim Burton’s Batman and his third Oscar win for James L. Brooks’ As Good As It Gets standing out as one of them. While there were bright spots along the way – including his tour-de-force support in A Few Good Men and his hammy reunion with Burton in Mars Attacks! – it was hardly the greatest period of his career.
Self-directed Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes was a major step down from its predecessor, rom-com Man Trouble was a huge flop, crime thriller Blood and Wine was another commercial misfire, and Terms of Endearment follow-up The Evening Star suffered much the same fate as The Two Jakes after Nicholson made a misstep reprising one of his most powerful roles.
Depending on who gets asked, Hoffa either fits neatly into that run of disappointments or stands out as one of Nicholson’s most underrated and unsung performances. Directed by and co-starring Danny DeVito, the biographical crime story unfolds largely through flashbacks before culminating in the famously unsolved disappearance of its protagonist, although it favoured a more conspiratorial dramatization of the events.
Hoffa may have earned Oscar nominations for ‘Best Cinematography’ and ‘Best Makeup’, but it was an incredibly polarising movie. What can’t be argued is that it failed to recoup its budget at the box office, but the divisiveness of Nicholson’s work can be encapsulated by the fact he was both shortlisted for a Golden Globe in the ‘Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama’ category, and nominated for ‘Worst Actor’ at the Golden Raspberry Awards.
As befitting his process, Nicholson put no small amount of research into his preparations, to the point he admitted to Deseret that he pushed himself to a place he’d never ventured before. “I never had this opportunity to actually look at the person I was playing,” he said of combing through 80-90 hours of footage depicting Hoffa during his everyday life. “I think it brought something extra, an area that I never really went to before.”
Nobody could seem to agree if it was Nicholson at the top of his game or at the bottom of the barrel, but playing a real-life figure captured so heavily on camera at least presented him with a different type of challenge. The Golden Globes thought he nailed it, the Razzies vehemently disagreed, but what can’t be denied is that the star fully dedicated himself to getting it right in his own eyes.
