The 1977 Steven Spielberg blockbuster smash that Jack Nicholson turned down
Jack Nicholson has always been very choosy about his roles. As the story goes, he only took on the Anger Management job because, a few years earlier, he took a golf club to a car following a bout of road rage and felt he had to do some ironic repentance.
So, from the outside, turning down Steven Spielberg might seem like a bold move by Nicholson, but to a million producers and casting agents that he’s batted away in the past, it came as no surprise. “I like making beautiful things,” he once said of his picky process. “Maybe that sounds ridiculous but when I choose a film to do, it’s because it interests me in that way rather than any other.”
Clearly, he didn’t see Spielberg’s 1977 creation as all that “beautiful” then. But to the director, it was somewhat of a fascination. When the would-be filmmaker was just a kid, one incident that set his fevered imagination racing was when he witnessed a meteorite shower with his father. It was pure magic. The sort of thing he would later hunger to capture with a camera.
So, years later, in 1977, when he was establishing himself as a filmmaker, he decided it was high tide to make his most personal film to date. He would pore over the project. He would take the wonder of that childhood moment and make it extraterrestrial, coming up with the story of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
However, as he penned the script, he struggled to tie down who he thought would be fit to play Roy Neary, the electrical lineman who encounters a UFO and soon finds himself in the depths of an obsession with flying saucers. Naturally, he needed someone a little eccentric for the role, so in Hollywood, he had a lot to choose from. And oddly, he was no stranger to being rejected.
In the running for the role, Spielberg touted Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Nicholson. With a similar frenzied energy to that exhibited by Nicholson’s character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest just two years earlier, Spielberg figured he would be perfect for the role of the beloved yet wayward Neary.
However, by this point, Nicholson was also at the top of his artistic game; thus, it has been cited by sources that he turned it down because he didn’t want to be upstaged by special effects.
Nicholson is a man of dichotomies, and while he tries to remain modest, saying, “When they say I’m a great actor, I close my ears because it’s not good for you to think that way”, he’s also quick to add, “Well, you know, I put on a good show.” At the height of his career, he figured he should be the show rather than the CGI department. So, he bluntly rejected Spielberg off the bat.
Richard Dreyfuss, however, was more than happy to try and hold his own amid the bombast of flying saucers, so he did everything he could to get the role. Spielberg said that while they were working together on Jaws, Dreyfuss badgered him for the role. “Dreyfuss talked me into casting him. He listened to about 155 days’ worth of Close Encounters. He even contributed ideas,” the director recalled.
He went further than that, too. Dreyfuss happily admits that he sullied his competition, recalling: “I launched myself into a campaign to get the part. I would walk by Steve’s office and say stuff like ‘Al Pacino has no sense of humor’ or ‘Jack Nicholson is too crazy’. I eventually convinced him to cast me.” He’s never regretted that decision.
While the film went on to be a beloved smash hit, it is unlikely that Nicholson regrets the decision, not least because of his laissez-faire character, but also because around that time, he was given a chance to direct. The resultant effort, Goin’ South, might not have been a masterpiece by any measure, but at least he ticked that box.
