Syndicated interview with Jack Nicholson
A three time Oscar winner, Jack Nicholson has starred in a string of iconic roles in a 50 year film career. From Easy Rider to Chinatown, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest to Prizzi's Honour he remains one of the most recognisable film stars on the planet.
In The Bucket List he plays terminally ill billionaire Edward Cole who - with fellow cancer sufferer Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) - sets off on a life affirming road trip filled with the extraordinary experiences they had always dreamed of.
If you had to look back over your life, as your character in The Bucket List does, how would you feel? And what allowances have you made for entering your eighth decade?
"I don't have a lot of negative regrets in terms of lying, or stepping on someone else. I don't have to worry about that, I never did it. But certain things you do have to change, for instance this energy. I used to rely on my legs to solve a lot of problems. The Dodger, I could get in and out of this room and get back and you wouldn't even know. Like at a party you'd go out one door and go around. When you lose a certain amount of your stamina, you have to adjust - and this applies to other areas as well."
When did you first notice that you did not have as much energy as you once did?
"I couldn't put a time on it. But on The Bucket List I was actually worried about the element that's never seen on screen, because it takes a lot of energy to do a movie you know. I had to pay particular attention to that fatigue, and I was glad that [director] Rob Reiner's approach was to do very fast takes. You see it in various ways, particularly if you more than commonly use stamina to solve problems. I could always stand up longer than most actors and pretty quickly you learn this is an asset. So it's probably in work that I first noticed it."
One thing that hasn't changed is your fame; do you find you can walk down the street without being recognised, or targeted by the paparazzi?
"No. I was telling somebody the other night, because with the [British] smoking ban I have to leave the table and go outside for a cigarette. I don't move a muscle for the entire cigarette, and I wear dark glasses. They've got that picture, and there's only one reason why they keep doing this, they're hoping that you'll give them something else. I stand there and don't move a muscle. Go ahead, keep firing. But it's a fact that in Europe or in London I haven't gone in or out of a doorway almost ever without photographers being there. They pick you up at the hotel - many are friends, I recognise them now - but there's no point in having an attitude about anything that's that inevitable."
Can you understand younger actors getting aggressive with the paparazzi?
"Yes, no-one's impeccable. The first time they wouldn't let up taking pictures I was carrying my infant daughter and that's the last time I got in trouble. I took the man's camera and threatened him with it. That was a momentary lapse, and it wasn't about me it was about an infant. But that's an isolated incident."
Your own breakthrough with Easy Rider came about 10 years or more after you started in movies. Looking back was that long apprenticeship a good thing?
"I didn't feel that way at the time but it's a tremendous advantage to being a late success. I got to see the mistakes others made, and quite frankly I don't know how anybody learns to act in the movies unless they get a chance to see the mistakes that they're making and gradually eliminate them. After the fact I definitely felt it was an advantage."
In so many of your films you appear to take it in your stride. Is it as easy for you as it looks?
"People ask about the work, because it does look easy. Well you don't want to let the sweat show, the harder you work before the easier it looks. I think when you do your job well the object is to make the work invisible, and when you do it well it is so you don't get the credit for it."
Did you have a 'bucket list' of things to achieve when you started out in movies?
"It wasn't a bucket list, but I mean I'm a cinephile and a New Wave baby so there were a lot of directors that I wanted to work with. And fortunately that's what I got to do."
Who would you like to work with now?
"There comes a period where you're working with John Huston and these fellas, and then you have to pick who you think is a good young director who hasn't done a movie yet. I've been very fortunate in that way, I've done a lot of first or second films with new directors. I'm a failed director myself, so I know what makes a good movie."
Your character in The Bucket List is an absent father for his grown up daughter. How do you achieve a good relationship with your own children when your work so often takes you away from them?
"I had two children when I was in my 50s, and I knew then that they were a boon to my emotional life, which has proved to be true. As opposed to 'how am I going to support them, will they get to do this?', all that was behind me. So it was innate that I concentrate on them. I was old enough to understand this is a boon in your life, when you have children. Frankly my first daughter, after her mother and I had divorced they moved to Hawaii and I didn't have that kind of contact with her. I think, as anyone would, she must have felt that. I may not have been as good a parent in that case, simply because they were in Hawaii. People will often say 'I don't know if I want to have children,' but I always say to anybody who asks me that this is nature's only bona fide, guaranteed, upside surprise. I remember the birth on my first daughter vividly."
Were you present for it?
"You weren't allowed in those days, and I was glad for that. I remember waking up and they said 'well, you have a daughter,' and the first thing in my mind was 'my God, my life has changed forever,' But I was involved with the rest of my children, I was there when they were born."
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