The role of Randle McMurphy is a highlight in a career that’s frankly nothing but highlights. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of a charismatic criminal who feigns insanity to get out of going to jail allowed the actor to once again showcase his unique talent for playing roguish trickster types a little too well. Nicholson was fresh off his Oscar-nominated turn in “Chinatown” when he took the role of McMurphy — he famously accepted his BAFTA award for the film from the “Cuckoo’s Nest” set — and would once again receive a nomination for his role in Miloš Forman’s movie. Only this time, he won.
Running down the man’s career since “Cuckoo’s Nest” in a paragraph is an impossible feat. Needless to say, Nicholson worked consistently in the decades following the film, churning out unforgettable performance after unforgettable performance and earning numerous awards in the process, including a further two Best Actor Oscars for 1983’s “Terms of Endearment” and 1997’s “As Good as It Gets.” Perhaps one of the best honors he received, though, was praise from the great Stanley Kubrick, who viewed Nicholson as possessing one “unactable” quality that made him such an ineluctable dramatic force: intelligence.
What’s Jack up to these days? Well, the man basically disappeared from acting after 2010’s “How Do You Know?” You may have seen the headlines about the now 86-year-old being holed up in his LA home, wasting away alone, but the truth is nobody really knows what he’s up to or how he’s doing. If anything, the Hollywood vet is surely enjoying some quiet time after one of the most prolific and impressive careers the industry has ever seen.