He takes it easy these days – or is it that he is disappointed with the kind of parts offered? Since As Good As It Gets (1997), the occasion of his third Oscar, he has worked only seven times – if you count How Do You Know, which will be out at the end of this year. It's a James Brooks film, and Brooks has done nothing since As Good As It Gets either. But Jack has a good track record with the director – they did Terms of Endearment together, for which Nicholson got the best supporting actor Oscar. So there may be young people around by now who don't know the sly charmer he could be when he was young. All the more reason to see the rerelease of Five Easy Pieces, which is 40 years old.He came into prominence with the great burst of creativity in American film in the early 70s, after a long and frustrating period where he made biker pictures and Poe horrors for Roger Corman without really being noticed. It was only when Rip Torn had a fight with directors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper that Jack got the part of the lawyer who goes along with the boys on Easy Rider. All of a sudden, his wry smile, his sarcastic whine and his hangdog courage were home. He would be the natural man of the 70s, a rebel but disillusioned; he was the nearest to what James Dean might have been had he lived.He is 73 and his patience may be short. His best directors are dead, retired or out of reach – Polanski's sexual assualt incident occurred in his house. But it would be foolish to put him on the shelf. If anyone can play a startling old man these days it's not Beatty or Redford or Pacino or De Niro or Hoffman. It's Jack – and I think we all know it, and think of him as the smartest actor of his age.
At the time of the Kubrick film, some critics said Nicholson had gone too far, that his eyebrows had taken over the performance, that he was being "Jack". But if you look at it now, it's clear that he had intuited the raging black comedy with absolute clarity. Always trust an actor when in middle age he starts to see the absurd aspect of his own image.
By then, he was a movie star, and half bored with it all. When he made The Postman Always Rings Twice, Rafelson said he was worried Jack was letting his looks go. He was content to play supporting parts (Reds); he was willing to be stupid (Prizzi's Honor); a bum (in Ironweed); or lurid and satanic (The Witches of Eastwick). But it was plain that he felt the tide going out. People were not making the kind of pictures that excited him. The sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes, didn't work. His private life was messy. He made a superb film – Hoffa – which the public ignored. So he drifted towards paydays – none bigger than Batman, nor more indulgent than The Departed.
The landmarks came in rapid succession: Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens (both for Bob Rafelson), Carnal Knowledge for Mike Nichols, The Last Detail for Hal Ashby. Then as Jake Gittes in Chinatown, written by his pal Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski, The Passenger for Michelangelo Antonioni (a film Jack owned because he believed in it), and then his first Oscar as Randall McMurphy in Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. By the end of the decade, you could throw in The Fortune, The Missouri Breaks (with Brando), The Last Tycoon, Goin' South (a wacky western he directed) and The Shining.