The role that terrified Jack Nicholson: “What if I can’t get back to me?”
People react to getting older in different ways, and while Jack Nicholson hardly toned down his hedonistic lifestyle with age, it did impact him professionally in a way he could have never expected.
The star spent decades reigning supreme as not only one of Hollywood’s finest actors but also one of its most notorious party animals. Nicholson was often spotted out and about getting up to his old tricks when he wasn’t holding one of his infamous parties behind closed doors, but it never affected his work.
Almost the perfect embodiment of the movie star during the era he first rose to prominence, the three-time Academy Award winner was always at the top of his game in front of the camera and always ready to let his hair down away from it. However, once he entered his 60s, things began to change.
Nicholson was 60 years old when As Good As It Gets released in cinemas, which ended up winning him his third acting Oscar. The role of a short-tempered creative who eventually charms his way into a new romance was hardly a million miles removed from real life, but it was the two parts immediately after that which began pushing him in a different direction.
Sean Penn-directed crime thriller The Pledge cast him as a veteran detective beset by his own woes as he investigates a murder, with Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt tasking him to embody a brooding, miserable curmudgeon with unkempt hair and a bedraggled appearance who makes it his mission to try and prevent his daughter from getting married.
The coming-of-old-age story was a rousing success that landed Nicholson the 12th and final Oscar nomination of his career, but he didn’t like what he saw. In fact, he admitted to the Irish Independent that he was so disenchanted with the physical appearance of Warren Schmidt that he was genuinely concerned he was in danger of letting himself go completely when the cameras stopped rolling.
“I really got myself into a mess for that picture as well and every day I would look into that mirror and think, terrified: ‘What if I get stuck in this character? What if I can’t get back to me?'” he mused. “Then, I guess I have always looked kind of extreme up there.”
Needless to say, Nicholson didn’t end up losing himself after playing a dishevelled old man, as his rambunctious performance in The Bucket List, charismatic turn in the romantic comedy Something’s Gotta Give, his ability to ham it up alongside Adam Sandler in Anger Management, and some ferocious scenery-chewing in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Best Picture’ winner The Departed showcased beyond doubt.
After that, James L. Brooks’ How Do You Know marked the final entry in a legendary filmography, at which point Nicholson was free to become as bedraggled and unkempt as he wanted.
