The one role Jack Nicholson admitted he only played for the money: “I did it for the bread”
Virtually every star in Hollywood will play at least one role solely for the paycheque, but Jack Nicholson didn’t have to. He was one of the industry’s biggest and most in-demand actors for almost all of his mainstream career, which allowed him the leeway to earn big bucks for practically every part.
The three-time Academy Award winner once called himself the most successful actor in the history of cinema, and he wasn’t being arrogant. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, everything he touched turned a tidy profit, ensuring that he was among the highest-paid in addition to being one of his generation’s finest performers.
Nicholson raked in millions per picture, meaning he didn’t have to run around chasing dollar signs. Even when he segued into comedy in the early 2000s, his decision to pivot away from drama was driven by a desire to adopt a lighter approach in the aftermath of 9/11, although being paid $10 million for About Schmidt and $20 million for Anger Management certainly helped.
He even secured the most lucrative deal of all time when he agreed to play the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, with his percentages of the box office takings and merchandising netting him an estimated $60 million. Still, he’d been a fan of the character since his younger days and viewed the villain as a chance to apply a Shakesperean approach to superhero cinema, so it wasn’t strictly about the cash.
There are always exceptions to the rule, though, and for Nicholson, it came in the 1970 fantastical musical dramedy On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. It was his first movie to be released after Easy Rider and arrived on the big screen three months before Five Easy Pieces, so he wasn’t quite a superstar yet.
Funnily enough, that turned out to be one of his primary motivations for agreeing to play a part that saw him billed seventh in the cast, well behind leading lady Barbra Streisand. In the aftermath of his Oscar-winning performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The New York Times asked Nicholson if he felt he was “compromising his artistic principles” by making On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
“No,” came the response. “I did it for the bread.” At least he was honest about it, and the film was an outlier. He was fresh from his first Oscar nomination in the counterculture classic and was about to notch another for Five Easy Pieces, which meant he was becoming increasingly famous without being rich. Not yet, anyway.
Everyone has bills to pay, and Nicholson made no bones about securing an easy paycheque between his demanding dramatic turns. He wasn’t the main attraction by any stretch, but the film still recouped its budget almost twice over at the American box office, adding another early hit to a collection that would soon be overflowing with them.
