Jack
Nicholson
Jack Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is a highly
successful American method actor. He is best known for portraying
antagonistic, cynical, neurotic and aggressive characters. He received
Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, and has been nominated for an Academy
Award a dozen times, winning three of them. He has also won seven
Golden Globe Awards.
He was born John Joseph Nicholson in New York, New York, although
until 1974 he had thought his place of birth was his hometown, Neptune,
New Jersey. A journalist's research uncovered what apparently had
happened: the woman he had always thought of as his mother was actually
his grandmother, who had arranged to raise him as her own child.
She did this because he was actually the illegitimate offspring
of her daughter, a woman whom Nicholson thought was his older sister.
Because of this fact Nicholson is pro-life and has spoken out about
it saying, "I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion
because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any
other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life."
Nicholson started his career as an actor, writer, and producer,
working for and with Roger Corman. This included his screen debut
in The Cry Baby Killer (1958), where he played a juvenile delinquent
who panics after shooting two other teenagers, and Little Shop of
Horrors.
His work with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on the LSD-fueled The
Trip led to his real break. That film led to a small supporting
role in Easy Rider (1969), for which he received his first Oscar
nomination. A Best Actor nomination came the following year for
his persona-defining role in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which includes
his famous chicken salad dialogue about getting what you want.
Other early movies he is known for include Roman Polanski's Chinatown
(1974), Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for
which he received his first Oscar, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Nicholson won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his
role in Terms of Endearment (1984).
The 1989 Batman, where Nicholson played the supervillain The Joker,
was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal
earned Nicholson about US$50 million. For his role as Col. Nathan
R. Jessep in A Few Good Men (1992), a dark movie about a murder
in a military unit, he received yet another nomination by the Academy.
He would win his next Oscar for his role as the neurotic lead in
the romance As Good as it Gets (1997).
The 9/11 terrorist attacks led Nicholson to focus on comedies. In
About Schmidt (2002), Nicholson portrayed a man who questions his
own life after his retirement and the death of his wife. The deeply
emotional, slow film stands in sharp contrast to many of his previous
roles. In the comedy Anger Management, he plays an aggressive therapist
alongside Adam Sandler. His most recent film is the 2003 Something's
Gotta Give.
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