The ultimatum that launched Jack Nicholson’s career: “You’re fucking up my movie”
With his position secure as one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars, it’s hard to imagine a world where Jack Nicholson didn’t ascend to legendary status, notch a succession of knockout performances, and win three Academy Awards from a record-setting 12 nominations.
The perfect A-lister for his era, Nicholson was the embodiment of ‘New Hollywood’ onscreen and off. In front of the camera, he channelled the influence of Marlon Brando to bring an effortless naturalism to a range of disparate characters, while away from it, he revelled in the sex, drugs, and debauchery of the time, ensuring he was never too far away from either the Oscars or the headlines.
For a while, though, Nicholson’s future was uncertain. He followed the path walked by many of his contemporaries by becoming a regular collaborator of Roger Corman, but a breakthrough performance that would send his career to the next level constantly remained out of reach.
He was a bit-part player, occasional leading man, and semi-prolific screenwriter for the first decade of his career until Easy Rider changed everything. The counterculture classic lit a fuse under Nicholson, got him on the Oscars shortlist for the first time, and set the stage for his first major dramatic leading role in Five Easy Pieces, yielding another Oscar nod.
And yet, Dennis Hopper didn’t want him anywhere near the cast. That might come as a shock when the two were firm friends and remained so until the latter’s death, but the Easy Rider star and co-writer admitted that the only reason Nicholson ended up playing George Hanson was because one of the producers told him to.
“Bert Schneider called me into his office,” Hopper recalled to Interview. “Bert never wanted to see anything until the first cut. That’s the way he worked. After he saw the first cut, he got involved. But he calls me into his office and says, ‘I haven’t asked you to do anything, but I want you to use Jack Nicholson.'”
Hopper had planned on hiring Starett for the part, who’d recently finished shooting the biker flick Hells Angels on Wheels with Nicholson, of all people. “I said, ‘But Nicholson is not right for the part. Starrett is,”‘ he remembered saying. “He said, ‘Right or wrong, I want you to use Jack’. I said, ‘OK, Bert, but you’re fucking up my movie’. That was it!”
Needless to say, Nicholson didn’t ruin Easy Rider. Far from it, in fact. Hopper may have been told that he had to use the actor even if he didn’t think he was the right fit, but he wasn’t too proud to admit that he was wrong. The film gets a lot of credit for launching Nicholson’s career, but it wouldn’t have happened if Schneider hadn’t demanded he play Hanson despite Hopper’s protestations.
