After three Oscars and a decades-long career defined by amazing roles, Jack Nicholson has proven himself to be one of the greatest actors working in film today. Parade magazine spent nearly seven hours with Nicholson in Los Angeles, his home for 54 years.
(Fun Fact: Nicholson was styled by Victoria Beckham for this photo shoot. He was introduced to Beckham by a mutual stylist friend.)
His Working-Class Childhood
“[New] Jersey’s the most parochial place in the world, but the Shore, from Red Bank to Point Pleasant, was a very great place for a kid to grow up. It’s a country club kind of mixed area with every kind of person there. All the way from the beach to Main Street, you could read the dollar sign on the houses. As little kids, we didn’t deal with class boundaries. We were all over one another.”
Hanging Out at New Jersey’s Monmouth Park Race Track…and Handicapping Horses
“Even that I felt was an advantage. I was a good handicapper. That’s where I got my spending money. The first car I bought was with racetrack money. Even when I worked at MGM, I ran football cards for the bookie there. In the entire season we paid off just two tickets. That’s how hard it is to pick three winners against a spread.”
His Catholic Family
“I’ve a very Catholic Irish grandmother, one of the Lynches. She is the root of the family, although my immediate family were failed Irish Catholics. So I had to haltingly investigate Catholicism by myself because nobody asked me to go to church. I was the oldest kid in my First Communion classes. In my opinion, if you’re going to be theocratic, Catholicism is the most intelligent belief system.”
“My family were tough-minded people who didn’t go much for what they called the ’shanty Irish’ or professional Irish. But they were Irish, and it manifested itself from an early age. I could always express my opinion, like everybody else, and things got talked about. I wasn’t inhibited by anything.”
The Passing of His Relatives
“My mother was the first to die, and then my grandmother. We were kind of on the outs because she thought I’d wasted enough time trying to make it in show business. I didn’t take well to the criticism. Then she got sick with cancer, and of course I took care of her.”
“The last time I saw her we talked quite a bit about life and death. You’ve got those bright, terminal eyes staring at you and asking you a lot of questions. I know everything about charity and hospitals because none of us had any money.”
Moving to Los Angeles
“In California, I didn’t know anybody except June [his birth mother], who was living here in Hollywood Park. She taught herself to type and worked her way up. I liked the idea of California. Anyway, I didn’t feel I was ready to go to college and work at night. I thought I’d stay here a semester and then go home to college. Frankly, when the time came to go back East, I didn’t have the money.”
“I always knew there wasn’t going to be anybody to help me and emotionally support me, that whatever I did I’d have to do on my own. It makes you rather desperate when you’re 16 and you don’t know what you want to do with your life, but you know you have to do something.”
Read the rest of the interview after the cut!
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