Jack Nicholson: The Life and Times of an Actor on the Edge (Paperback)

What do we know about Jack other than the demon eyes and jet-black shades. This book attempts to reveal more of the enigmatic and much loved actor with in the biz, whilst going through his filmography and loves and drugs, not all of it above board.

The first ninety pages read like a divorce transcript as we begin with an update of frisky Jacks love life in the present day. This is most unusual for a biog and makes the first chunk really rather dull. It picks up around here as we are given some background on his early film career and triumphs. Even the Mafia gets a look in as with most of the crowd called the legendary Jack Pack. There are dollar signs everywhere as lawyers and ex lovers make a killing out of the loveable rogues gullibility in an industry that will take you for every cent says the author Peter Thompson. It really is worth skipping the first quarter of the read as theres little about his films and lots about airhead women cashing on all guys hero.

Born in Neptune, New Jersey to a fourteen-year-old mother and a vagrant father he never knew, Nicholson didn't have the best start in life. He grew up believing he was an illegitimate son and that seemed to effect his early views on relationships and women. His heritage was from solid Irish stock so that explains his drinking habits, Hollywood would introduce him to LSD and beyond. Mud, his nickname for the women who dragged him up when he moved to California in his late teens, was later to be reveled as Jacks sister by a magazine, much to the stunned silence from the great actor. He had no idea and asked the tabloids to bury the story until he was ready to respond.

Nicholson broke into movies through writing and helping out on film sets, rather than setting out to be an actor. He was going into the business on the crest of a new wave in Hollywood, lead by the great Marlon Brando and his unique method acting. The actor was to become good neighbors with the Nicholson clan as their friendship grew like the great mans waste line through the seventies and eighties. With Vietnam raging, like most professionals and arty types, he engineered away around the draught with little or no military intervention. Jack chose the loophole through enlisting for the then home guard fire service.

His first film roles came through the famous pulp B movie director, Bruce Corman who would make prolifically fast movies in less than a week which had a knack of turning a small profit. Jack acted, produced and co wrote in the three films he did. But ti was all to change when at the age of 32 years and 20 small time movies, the script of Easy Rider flopped on his apartment floor. It was also the year when his first marriage broke up to small time actress Susan Sastonach which freed up the actors emotions to became one of the worlds great contemporary performers.

Denis Hopper and Peter Fonda were superb in this massive sixties hit across Americas hippie cinemas. But a star was born as the critics raved about Nicholsons performance, rather than the two big actors in the flick. The mix of drugs, motorbikes and women grabbed the American cinema going public and Jacks famous smile was born, splashed over every industry mag in town. His performance as George Hanson, the guy sharing the cell with the two drug dealers in Fonda and Hopper after a bender, so enticed directors and film people that he was immediately snatched up to star in the excellent Five Easy Pieces.

Roman Polanski loved directing Nicholson in this, as he bought out the best in the young actor. So successful was this movie that it took $45 million at the box office from only a 400 hundred thousand budget. Its believed be the most profitable film ever made for under a million. It received eleven Oscar nominations and sent Nicholson into the stratosphere as Americas most talented and bankable star. Chinatown quickly followed on to the Nicholson CV, which again received a bag full of nominations, but still not the big one for best actor.

John Hutson, the notoriously tough and eccentric director was running the film. He was not best pleased when he found out during filming that Jack was seeing his beautiful daughter Angelica, who the actor later married. The book author believes that the extra tension between the director and actor was the formula needed to bring out Nicholsons best performance yet.

Jacks attitude with women was very old fashioned and selfish.he quoted as saying the more a guy acts the part, i.e. selfish, boorish and arrogant, the more the women wants the man and so the more the guy regresses."I treat women how they need to be treated, rather than how they wanted to be", well, the master has spoken guys...