The one thing Jack Nicholson refused to do for a role: “All things being equal, I don’t want to”
The entire point of being an actor is to disappear into a character, which often means taking on drastically different roles from the performer’s real-life personality. However, despite being one of the all-time greats, Jack Nicholson refused to let a fictional request get in the way of a factual lifelong love.
As a three-time Academy Award-winning icon with a track record of critical and commercial success spanning decades, Nicholson was in one of Hollywood’s most comfortable positions before his self-imposed exile from the industry. He only played the parts he wanted to play; his demands were usually met when he agreed to do so, and he was a formidable enough personality that studios and filmmakers would bend to his whims.
It’s a rare and fortunate status that not many thespians can achieve, but it comes with the territory of a living legend. Movies are generally better with Nicholson in them than without, and he knew it. Even when he was going for broke, inhaling the scenery, and improvising on the fly to deliver one of his final – and unsurprisingly great – performances, he had no issues shutting down one of cinema’s most renowned auteurs.
Nicholson was on tremendous form in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Best Picture’ winner The Departed, and he was given plenty of leeway to make mob boss Frank Costello as terrifying as possible. While he was dissuaded from causing arson on set in the name of authenticity, the filmmaker gave him plenty of creative freedom to add flourishes to his work that weren’t there on the page when he called action.
The sprawling crime saga was set in Boston, Costello was the most feared figure in the local criminal underworld, and the city was integral to every aspect of the story. And yet, when it was suggested to Nicholson that he wore apparel bearing the insignia of the native baseball team, the New Jersey-born actor’s staunch commitment to the New York Yankees ensured it was a non-starter.
In a scene, Costello was required to wear a hat. Nicholson didn’t mind putting on headgear, so long as it wasn’t tied to Boston. “First of all, they wanted me to wear a Red Sox hat,” he told New York Magazine. “But I said, ‘All things being equal, I don’t want to’. My Yanks, they came before the Lakers, of course.”
Instead, Nicholson suggested a compromise, which saw his onscreen girlfriend, Gwen (played by Kristen Dalton), wear a Red Sox hat to “politically mollify the fans in Boston.” Mark Wahlberg, about as Bostonian as they come, addressed his co-star’s refusal to show fictional support for the team by admitting that “Jack can do whatever Jack wants.”
Famously, an identical shoe was placed on the other foot several years later when Ben Affleck shut down the production of David Fincher’s Gone Girl for days because the Red Sox fan couldn’t bring himself to wear a Yankees hat on camera. It’s diva-like behaviour, but it goes to show that the biggest names in the business refuse to abandon their favourite sports teams even when they’re working.
