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Nicholson is honest enough to concede that there have been certain disadvantages. "There are two ways up the ladder—hand over hand or scratching and clawing. It's sure been tough on my nails." It has also been taxing on his social energies. After Easy Rider, Pal Harry Gittes (after whom Chinatown's shamus was named) remembers Nicholson buttonholing people if he got a look of even tentative recognition, "introducing himself and making himself unforgettable, one person at a time." Last year at Cannes he was observed doing similar gladhanding because he wanted to win the best-actor award for The Last Detail. He did.
All the good work and the unembarrassed politicking have paid off handsomely. Now, from a vantage point at the top of that ladder, Nicholson can settle in. Los Angeles is home base, where he lives with Anjelica Huston, daughter of Director John Huston (a co-star in Chinatown). From there, he and Anjelica, whom he calls Tootman, make frequent lavish forays to New York and Paris, where there are good shops, restaurants and many friends, and to Switzerland, where he likes to ski.
Like many suddenly rich people, Jack's attitude toward money swivels wildly. Anjelica just got a Mercedes for her 23rd birthday. According to Mike Nichols, Nicholson always has "several thousand bucks out" to help friends over some rough spots. But Roman Polanski says that at other times Nicholson is "stingier than W.C. Fields." Once at Maxim's, Nicholson fought for and won the $600 check. When he found that one of his dinner companions could have taken care of the bill as a business expense, he was miserable.
Ever careful of possessions, he once called Anjelica in London from Rome to ask: "I can't find my comb. Did you pack it?" She found it and, much relieved, he responded long-distance, "O.K., take care of it for me." He is sometimes subject to gusty emotions. Friends say he has cried when seeing them off at airports. He calls back home to Rain every Christmas to get the traditional family recipes.
Nicholson has never taken any pains to conceal two of his greatest pleasures—women and dope—from public view, perhaps partly because he knows they will add a little darkening to his deliberately scuffed, slightly sinister popular image. He has been a cannabis aficionado for the past 15 years, sampled LSD, and taken some snorts of cocaine. None of that is very unusual, especially in high-living Hollywood circles. Jack evidently can handle it; several friends speak of his basically controlled, "non-addictive personality." His long-standing romantic relationships (with Model Mimi Machu, with Singer Michelle Phillips) ended stormily, with Nicholson torn for weeks between fury and depression. But the serious love affairs were also punctuated by bursts of inconstancy, and he likes to boast about them. "Jesus," he said to one friend about a high-paid fashion model who was flying in for an assignation, "she's coming 10,000 miles for a weekend."