Morgan Freeman’s favourite Jack Nicholson movie: ‘It knocked my socks off’
The golden-voiced Morgan Freeman is one of the most respected actors in cinema, but even he has his idols. One of these is acting legend Jack Nicholson, who has an expansive and mighty filmography that has influenced many Hollywood stars.
During an interview with Alex Simon, Freeman discussed his acting heroes. On Jack Nicholson, Freeman notes that he has been a fan of his work since he saw Easy Rider. However, the movie that truly captured his attention was Five Easy Pieces. The classic 1970s counterculture drama, directed by Bob Rafelson, was an effortless slice of cool. Nicholson played the leading role of Bobby Dupea, a surly oil rig worker, and his performance was so captivating that it earned him his second Academy Award nomination for good measure.
Five Easy Pieces was critically lauded, with each of its stars receiving widespread recognition. The film is a vital entrant in the New Hollywood era, from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, establishing a more nuanced and gritty style to an evolving cinematic landscape. This period saw many hangovers from the classic Hollywood model replaced in favour of exciting young auteurs and dynamic production techniques.
Many flourished during this period of filmmaking, but Nicholson, in particular, was integral to several touchstones from the era. Notable examples include Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, in which he embodied characters without typical performative gloss. This was greatly liberating for many actors, and Freeman was no exception.
Freeman has said that Five Easy Pieces “knocked his socks off,” and from that moment on, he had been “praying at the temple of Jack ever since”. Freeman recounted a later encounter with Nicholson while travelling on the Warner Bros plane during the filming of 1992’s Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood. Nicholson hitched a ride back to Los Angeles, giving Freeman the chance to express his admiration for Nicholson’s work—a sentiment that Nicholson quickly reciprocated.
The pair reportedly began discussing plans to star together in a sequel to Nicholson’s 1973 film, The Last Detail. The original movie followed two career sailors assigned to escort a young, emotionally withdrawn junior sailor from their Virginia base to Portsmouth Naval Prison in Maine.
Freeman and Nicholson had a proposed project in which the protagonists would reunite years later to once again escort a character back to prison. Unfortunately, the undertaking never came to fruition, and it would be several more years before Freeman and Nicholson would finally work together.
However, the stately pair finally came together in 2007’s Bucket List. The legendary actors played terminally ill men who met in hospital and embarked on a road trip to complete their wish lists. While the film isn’t quite a classic, the kinship between the two stars makes it clear that they were cut from the same cloth. Regardless, appearing in the movie alongside Nicholson may have crossed something off Freeman’s real-life bucket list.
Choosing a favourite Jack Nicholson movie feels like an impossibly difficult task. However, Freeman’s choice of Five Easy Pieces reflects the vital role Nicholson has had in shaping Hollywood actors and, indeed, the wider industry. It certainly suggests that Freeman’s acting style and success could have been markedly different without Nicholson’s earthy performance in Five Easy Pieces.
