Jack Nicholson’s surprising hatred of his most iconic asset: “People complain that they see too much”
Jack Nicholson was born to be an icon. With his Cheshire cat grin and charm so magnetic that he was one of Hollywood’s most notorious playboys at a time when it was practically an Olympic sport, he is perfectly suited to being in front of a camera. Whether playing an uptight lawyer introduced to the freedom of the road or an aspiring novelist with writer’s block and an unquiet mind, Nicholson provides an unpredictable edge to all his characters, regardless of whether the movie asks for it. His presence is always a net gain in a film, even if he steals the spotlight from every other actor.
Nicholson was one of the key figures in the New Hollywood movement of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, but instead of staying an industry rebel, he was embraced with open arms. Over the decades, he’s won three Academy Awards for vastly different movies. 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest saw him playing a joyfully rebellious patient in a mental institution. 1983’s Terms of Endearment saw him playing a retired astronaut with an eye for the ladies. And 1997’s As Good as It Gets saw him playing a grouchy writer with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It’s to Nicholson’s credit that these aren’t necessarily his most iconic films. Easy Rider, The Shining, and Chinatown have to make the list, and his turn as the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman is its own kind of genius.
Part of why Nicholson has managed to rack up so many iconic roles is that he hit the ground running as soon as he got to Hollywood. In the ‘70s alone, he made 15 movies. While this was a boon for audiences, it was not, according to Nicholson, good for his career. During a 1975 interview with People, the actor turned the conversation into an internal monologue of sorts.
“What bothers me about my acting?” he asked, “Well, I don’t like my smile and sometimes I get into too much physical business. But the biggest difficulty right now is that I’m in too many pictures. People complain that they see too much Nicholson. So in Cuckoo’s Nest I’ve developed a new technique. I pull my hat over my eyes, turn my back to the camera – and disappear within the very movie I am making!”
Sidestepping his self-consciousness was clearly the key to his acting abilities. “If a living reality doesn’t exist between the players in a scene, the scene won’t play,” he explained. “For instance, I never think of the actors I’m playing with as actors. I think of them as the people they’re pretending to be. That way, if an actor makes a mistake, I don’t feel it as a mistake. I see it as a quirk in that person’s behavior, and I react to that quirk.”
If this sort of mindset sounds familiar, it’s because Nicholson is describing, if not explicitly referencing, method acting. Although he has employed it throughout his career, Nicholson is rarely listed alongside more infamous method actors like Daniel Day-Lewis, Jared Leto, and Robert De Niro. “There’s probably no one who understands method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in this work,” he told Esquire in 2015. “But it’s funny – nobody really sees that. It’s perception versus reality, I suppose.”
Perhaps if he exuded more off-screen intensity, he might be associated with the method more often. But then again, that devil-may-care attitude is an intrinsic part of the charm.
