No question, the guy was different. A drawly, vaguely rural voice that started somewhere way back in his throat and almost didn't make it past his lips; a quizzical, unblinking gaze that tended to make other eyes turn away in embarrassment; a perfect, foot-wide smile that flashed on and off like the Eddystone Light. The casting director asked a few uneasy questions, paused, then blurted: "I don't know what we'd ever use you for, but if we need you, we'll need you very badly."
That was Jack Nicholson's first try for an acting job, and it was 14 years before he was needed that badly. Then, as the one articulate, genuinely comic character in Easy Rider, Nicholson became a leading participant in the upheaval that has caused Hollywood, for better or for worse, to churn out an endless series of "relevant," youth-oriented little movies. The role won him the New York Film Critics' Award, an Academy Award nomination and a leading role in Director Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge. In the meantime he is appearing in Five Easy Pieces in a starring role that should win him his second consecutive Oscar nomination.
Sandra After School. How can overnight success take 14 years? Probably because Nicholson, 33, used to be the sort who'd rather let things happen than make them happen. He began acting in high school in Neptune, N.J., but not out of any burning ambition. "I got sort of talked into it by a teacher," he says. "And all the chicks that I liked were doing plays—rehearsals after school with Sandra, that kind of thing."
Having skipped a couple of grades, he decided to kill a year between high school and college, went to live with his sister in Los Angeles. He worked in a toy store, shot pool, and went to the track. Finally, he took a job as office boy in MGM's cartoon department "so I could watch movie stars." Then he began to study acting at the now defunct, professional Players Ring Theater. From then on, all thoughts of college vanished. He moved on to TV's Matinee Theater, and in 1958 he made his first movie, Cry Baby Killer.
That began a string of 18 flicks too terrible to mention. "I either played the clean-cut boy next door," he recalls, "or the murderer of a family of at least five." He also wrote a few himself: The Trip, starring Peter Fonda; Head, with the Monkees; and two westerns, which he also produced, made for $75,000 apiece. Nicholson personally carried them in hatboxes to European film festivals, where they won come acclaim. Still, they are too arty and paralytic for U.S. audiences; in The
Shooting, for example, the hero ends up shooting another character who seems to be the hero himself.