The one script that left Jack Nicholson in tears: “I know just how that guy feels”
To command respect in the world of cinema, you need to be able to do two things. Either you draw in an audience and generate box office sales for your studio, ensuring a career for you and countless others working in the industry. Or you work hard at your craft and become an artisanal acting behemoth. There aren’t many actors that can do both, and even fewer do so without enraging the other side of the coin. No actor in the glory days of Hollywood left as strong an impression on the industry as Jack Nicholson.
He’s not only the maniacal face peering through the bathroom door of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, nor simply the disenfranchised mind in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest nor the treacherous mob boss of The Departed. No, for many people, Jack Nicholson represents the golden era of Hollywood, a time when being a movie star was glamorous, glitzy and gilded with gold. Jack Nicholson is Tinseltown incarnate.
As well as being a fine actor, Nicholson often left tabloid newspapers, having to determine what was real or fake about his private life. With stories swirling of his insatiable drug use, including the alleged odd dabble with royalty, sexual conquests and almost unbelievable partying, Nicholson became the figurehead of the playboy scene that encouraged him and his fellow actors to languish in the debaucherous ideal of what a Hollywood heartthrob should be. It was this hedonism and penchant for promiscuity that often saw Nicholson toasted as the 20th-century ideal of a ‘man’s man’.
While Nicholson’s position as a macho-infused wild man was confirmed with every new story, the actor has also had some tender roles in his career, including one which left him a blubbing mess after his first read-through. Terms of Endearment is never the first film one thinks of when ascertaining the brilliance of Nicholson’s career. However, it is one of the most widely-appreciated movies of his career, winning five of the 11 Academy Awards it went up for, including ‘Best Picture’.
Nicholson, usually the star of the show, was happy to take a backseat for the directorial debut of James L Brooks after he read the script, and it affected him in a truly personal way. Taking on the role of a retired astronaut, whose life is now slowly passing him by on a downhill trajectory, he is swept up by the beauty and grace of Shirley MacLaine’s Aurora Greenway, and the two eventually begin a beautiful romance.
Making the most of his limited screen time, Nicholson floats in and out of Brooks’ movie, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. The novel follows a family from America’s South and the troubles of a widow looking for love. The poignant dramatic comedy centres around a core mother/daughter relationship, but it is spiced up by Nicholson’s astronaut-next-door, who brings his trademark charisma to this American classic.
When Nicholson was speaking with the late, great Roger Ebert about what attracted him to the role, Nicholson couldn’t speak highly enough of the script and how it connected with him on an emotional level: “I read the screenplay, and became the first enthusiast.”
This was no mean feat. Nicholson was one of the most in-demand actors of his generation and likely took on the arduous task of reading scripts as he routinely as he took out the bins. It means that he likely had a multitude of scripts on his desk at any one time: “How many scripts make you cry? I read dozens if not hundreds of screenplays every year, and I don’t read that many parts where I can say, like I did with Easy Rider, that, yeah, sure, I could play that guy. I know just how that guy feels.”
A perusal of Nicholson’s filmography will show you all the colours of the Hollywood rainbow, and Nicholson confirmed that was a strategy of his from the get-go: “My whole career strategy has been to build a base so that I could take the roles I want to play. I’d hate to think that a shorter part might not be available because I was worried about my billing.”
The film would start off a relationship between Brooks and Nicholson, with the director remaining one of the few filmmakers with whom Nicholson has consistently worked, the duo working together on another of Nicholson’s defining roles in As Good As It Gets. However, Nicholson’s performance in Terms of Endearment is undoubtedly his most subtly poised.
