The role that made Jack Nicholson overcome his vanity: “I had doubts about it”
There aren’t many actors to have ever made it to the top of the profession without carrying at least some degree of ego, with Jack Nicholson earning the right to be supremely confident in his abilities as both a performer and a personality.
Not only did he rise to the summit of the A-list in the 1970s by repeatedly proving himself as one of the very best in the business, but he was every bit as assured away from the cameras after doubling up as Hollywood’s most famous party animal and ladies’ man.
It takes a serious level of confidence – and more than a hint of vanity – for anyone to refer to themselves as the single most commercially successful actor in the history of cinema, but Nicholson did. He wasn’t just saying it for shits and giggles, either, instead pitting his track record at the box office against anyone to have ever graced the silver screen without finding anybody who came close.
Nicholson won three Oscars for his dramatic prowess and deserved every single one of them, but he was never a particularly jacked or chiselled fellow. While he was happy to strip down to his skivvies and leap into a hot tub with Kathy Bates in About Schmidt, he wasn’t quite as uninhibited two decades previously.
Even though he was only in his late 40s when it was time to let it all hang out in Terms of Endearment, the encroaching threat of middle-aged spread saw him on the cusp of an existential crisis. “I have vanity, I have a lot of vanity,” he admitted to Roger Ebert. “When I stuck the old gut out there in the crucial scene, I had doubts about it on the set.”
Were those doubts assuaged once he’d plucked up the courage and gone ahead? Not really. In fact, he was ready to whip himself right back into shape and spend his next movie parading around in a loincloth. “At the premiere I had a lot of doubts,” he confessed. “And I was wondering if for my next picture I should play Tarzan.”
Of course, Nicholson didn’t experience such a crisis of confidence that he felt compelled to swing from trees and be raised in the animal kingdom playing Tarzan just to prove a point, and laying his vanity to one side in favour of doing justice to the material worked out very well for both the actor and Terms of Endearment at large.
He won an Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in a film that also scooped prizes for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, and ‘Best Actress’, so the entire team was firing on all cylinders. It may not have been a wonderful moment for his vainglorious side, but it was definitely worth it.
