Originally published on Facebook 3 May 2014.
Recently spoken to me, a canard I’ve heard before: “Jack Nicholson always plays the same character.”
This sounds good, but is only believed by people who have seen only a small number of his films.
The persona usually attributed to him, “Jack Nicholson,” the eyebrow-raising hell raiser who is simultaneously the angriest and most cynical person in the room, first appeared for about thirty seconds in the famous chicken-salad sandwich scene in FIVE EASY PIECES, and was so popular that it became his most requested character type, used to varying effect in films as good as ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST or as cartoonish as BATMAN or THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. (Others would be THE SHINING, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, and yes, his turn as Jessop in A FEW GOOD MEN.)
This has led to a lot of folks who consider only his most famous films charging that he has the range the width of a playing card.
Two problems with this.
First, only a few movie stars are chameleons of the Daniel Day-Lewis type. Many, like Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, have traditionally brought the characters to them, and there’s a substantial range of character types they can play within the bounds of the easily identified mannerisms; it would be foolish to call any of them untalented actors, and to the extent that Jack Nicholson has often played “Jack Nicholson” in quotes, it is certainly not true of him either. After all, Bogart is clearly Bogart playing Sam Spade, Fred Dobbs, and Captain Queeg, and the characters are still so different that you wouldn’t mistake them for one another even in a dark room. I give Nicholson the same leeway.
Secondly, it has absolutely never been true that this is the only character he plays. In THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS, he played a character utterly unlike the one he is known for, the quiet, emotionally constipated brother of a more demonstrative brother played by Bruce Dern. In PRIZZI’S HONOR, John Huston gave him one piece of direction, “Shut off your intelligence,” and Nicholson did just that, presenting us with a lug who was behind everybody else in the room. The “Jack Nicholson” light in his eyes didn’t flash once, throughout that film. In THE PLEDGE, he was a sad and driven retired cop who didn’t give us one, one, of Nicholson’s raised-eyebrow I’m-in-control moments. In ABOUT SCHMIDT, which I’ve always considered the geriatric companion piece to FIVE EASY PIECES — it even had a chicken-salad sandwich scene, unfortunately deleted, where he quietly acquiesced to the rude waitress’s dictates — “Nicholson” only pops his head up once, for only a few seconds. Nor is he “Jack Nicholson” in THE LAST DETAIL or THE PASSENGER.
He has played powerful men, powerless men, smart men, stupid men, men with incredible sexual magnetism and men who could not attract a five dollar hooker with the aid of a thousand dollar bill.
“Jack Nicholson,” I’d almost agree with you. Jack Nicholson, not so much.
Comment By: Keith R.A. DeCandido
May 3rd, 2017 at 9:49 am
It’s more frustrating to see him in a role that just goes back to that perceived notion. Some can rise above it — A Few Good Men, e.g. — and others can’t — his overrated turn in Batman — but mostly you just wish people would let him act instead of mug.
This also applies to Al Pacino and Will Smith, who CAN act, but will sometimes revert to their stereotyped role.