The role that frightened Jack Nicholson: “I was afraid”
The name Jack Nicholson practically screams fearlessness. The American actor and filmmaker carved out a reputation for playing hard-as-nails types, brimming with charm and that sly knack for sticking two fingers up at the system. Nicholson is the very definition of the leader of a pack.
The star of A Few Good Men seemed born to play Randle Patrick ‘RP’ McMurphy, the cheeky but rebellious convict in the 1975 classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As a result, the performance bagged him the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar and locked him in as cinema’s ultimate defiant rogue, an insurgent with a grin sharp enough to cut glass.
For all his screen presence, Nicholson wasn’t invincible. Off-camera, stepping out of the costumes and away from the bravado, there were moments where he didn’t quite seem at ease – not in the way the world had gotten used to expecting from him.
With the turn of the new century, it seemed that Nicholson adopted a new persona: he was rarely spotted without sunglasses on, no matter the season nor the event. This wasn’t bold arrogance, but a squeamishness towards his own lived reality, a fear that he didn’t want others to see. Of this choice, he once said, “I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye. But I can’t look into the eyes of everyone who wants to look into mine; I can’t emotionally cope with that kind of volume.”
Nicholson also hid behind a disguise in one of his most genre-defining performances, working with the gothic mastermind Tim Burton. In his 1989 Batman, Nicholson was brought on board to portray the creepy antagonist and epic villain, the Joker, with newfound seriousness. Burton believed that the film wouldn’t be taken seriously without a show-stopping performance from Nicholson, a fact which terrified the by-then seasoned actor.
“I was afraid because of my feel of the television series and the way movies tend to be done and talked about,” Nicholson once said. “I didn’t want this to go through the normal, ‘Let’s brighten it up for the kids’.”
Nicholson knew kids would respond to a darker version of the classic comic book character they’d recognise, but the line between unsimiling severity and well, a joke, was very thin.
“I thought this was a very strong — in every way — transitional movie about the genre, and really why they wanted me in there,” he added. And so he took the role more seriously than anyone else involved in the project, in an effort to revolutionise the way that the film industry saw adaptations. Nicholson was frightened because he knew a job done well would not just change the genre forever, it would define it. Plus, he had to star alongside Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger. That’d scare anyone, let alone the hell-raising poster boy tasked with shaping the future of cinema.
A lot was resting on Nicholson’s shoulders, including tens of millions of dollars. Nicholson walked away with one of the most lucrative deals in Hollywood history for the film, raking in anywhere between $50-$90million thanks to the crazy contract. Nicholson was so afraid of the role that he never starred in another supervillain role again, nor really any action blockbusters. In the words of the 1989 Joker, he was the “world’s first fully functioning homicidal artist.”
First, and last, for there can only be one Nicholson.
