“It was hard to do, but very stimulating”: the movie Jack Nicholson called the best thing I’ve ever done
With a record-setting 12 Academy Award nominations to his name and three victories to show for it, Jack Nicholson is inarguably one of the silver screen’s greatest-ever actors, with several of his performances worthy of being dubbed all-timers.
At the very least, Chinatown‘s J.J. Gittes and One Flew Over the Cuckoo‘s Nest’s Randall P. McMurphy comfortably rank as being two of the best turns ever delivered in any motion picture, and there are a few more for which a strong case could be made. Interestingly, one of his more polarising stood out to the man himself as his finest performative moment.
Nicholson may have a trio of Oscar wins from a dozen nods to go along with his three Baftas, a ‘Best Actor’ trophy from the Cannes Film Festival, six Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and even a Grammy, but he wasn’t entirely immune from being recognised from the ceremony that spotlights the worst of the worst.
It may have only happened once, but history nonetheless remembers Nicholson as a Razzie nominee, when he was shortlisted as ‘Worst Actor’ for both eviscerated romantic comedy flop Man Trouble and Danny DeVito’s biographical drama Hoffa. Bizarrely, though, he also found himself in the running for a Golden Globe with the latter.
A crime story written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter David Mamet that cast Nicholson as the union leader who disappeared under mysterious and unexplained circumstances that fascinated the public for decades sounded like an awards season home run, but the response was sharply divided.
However, as the leading man explained to The Independent, he was thrilled to try his hand at something he’d never done before throughout his entire career. “It’s the first film I’ve done about a real-life person,” Nicholson said. “I was able to watch old newsreels, and I met his son. I adopted a higher-pitched voice as he got older. Did you notice that?”
As a rule of thumb, Nicholson offered that “all I ever try to do is be in good movies, but now and again a part comes along which is an actor’s part, which has drama in the character.” Not everyone agreed, but Hoffa ticked those boxes for him personally. “It was hard to do but very stimulating,” he admitted. “My main object was the same as ever: to make it look easy. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Being in the running for a Golden Globe and a Razzie would indicate not everyone was in agreement that Jimmy Hoffa was the greatest performance of a legendary filmography, but Nicholson would clearly disagree. In all honesty, it might not even crack his top ten, but that speaks more to the consistent quality of his acting than anything else.
