This is an opinion poll, unless there’s someone here who knows the real Jack. Mine is a toss up between “Heartburn” and “Ironweed.” I would have loved to say “Witches of Eastwick” though.
Nicholson is the consummate actor. He does not play himself. Notice the difference between Five Easy Pieces and The Last Detail. He has played charactures of himself because the great smallish character studies that made him famous aren’t really done anymore.
Head?
He’s like Peter Ustinov: he isn’t capable of playing any role other than himself.
(I adore Peter Ustinov! His narrative and dialogue to the opera Hary Janos is a great treasure!)
Except those roles that are diametrically opposed to one another.
Ok, I’m glad that’s clear.
Nah: the underlying personality always shines through. The mask doesn’t conceal the man.
There are a great many actors who can subsume their individual personality in a role. But Nicholson (and Ustinov) isn’t (aren’t) among them.
In between going big in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST to win a Golden Globe and an Oscar and going big in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT to win a Golden Globe and an Oscar, he put in some quiet and subdued work in REDS – which, sure, only got him nominations at the Golden Globes and the Oscars, but he nailed it.
When Nicholson cares and when he has a director who gives him decent instructions, he’s a great actor. When he’s just doing his Crazy Jack schtick, it means…
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This movie is just a payday to him, and/or
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The director WANTS just a Crazy Jack hammy performance.
This can be said of any major Hollywood star (well, except for Meryl Streep). Certainly under the studio system, all actors played the same type over and over (one reason people like Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, etc., are still remembered).
But Tom Hanks plays the honest everyman in every role; Tom Cruise, the boyish charmer; Robert Downey, Jr., Tony Stark; Johnny Depp, Jack Sparrow. Depp and Downey were the type of multifaceted actor that the OP wants to see in Jack Nicholson, but didn’t achieve stardom until they started doing the same character over and over.
If audiences like an actor, they like seeing him or her doing things they like seeing. And no major studio would hire them to do something different, given the money at stake.
Anger Management.
A year after About Schmidt, two years before The Departed. So he was still doing great stuff.
But in the middle of that there is a crappy-even-by-his-standards Adam Sandler film.
And Jack was just doing Jack.
Exactly. Being a great actor is not the same thing as being a chameleon.
nm
I think there are two general kinds of acting that I notice in the professionals. Both qualify as “good acting.”
One category are the people who play each part so uniquely and so well, that you may not realize it’s the same actor until you look them up in IMDB or something. The other category are the ones who are really always themselves, but they make the audience believe that they really are going through whatever their character is going through in the story.
Example of the first kind: Eddie Marsan. Compare his character Red, in Hancock, to his character Josef Fischer in The Illusionist.
Example of the second, is Jack Nicholson. Compare his character J.J. Gittes in Chinatown, to his character Lt. Andre Duvalier in The Terror.
It’s the opposite of what the OP is looking for, but Nicholson’s character in About Schmidt seemed to have a very different personality from his own. “Staid” might be the word. So not that one.
Heh. IIRC, a review of About Schmidt emphasized how – well, just grant for the sake of argument that he put in an Oscar-caliber performance by playing that role about as well as any other award-caliber actor could’ve.
Are you willing to grant that? Okay, so, yeah; let’s go with that.
The difference is, we know it’s Jack Nicholson. We know that, if he gets just a bit more frustrated, he’ll spend a moment breaking out the biggest smirk you’ve ever seen before ENTHUSIASTICALLY SHOUTING AS A WILD-EYED MANIAC who’ll calm back down for six seconds of archly devilish sarcasm before SHOUTING SOME MORE!
And so, even if he never gets around to doing that, his performance is different than anyone else’s would be – because we see him not quite boil over, and we excitedly think “oh, man: he’s not quite boiling over! I’m inferring, and it’s awesome!”
Well, we’re straying from the OP, but we do see him boil over when he confronts his barber friend at the strip mall, and there are a couple more moments when he gets really angry.
That, incidentally, is one reason why Unforgiven is such a terrific movie - we spend the whole film at the edge of our seats waiting for Clint Eastwood to become Clint Eastwood, and then he does.
Movie where Jack Nicholson was Playing [with] **Himself. **