It’s probably a good idea that Jack Nicholson didn’t revive his role as Jack Torrance in the, frankly pretty ropey, sequel to The Shining that many of us endured last year.
The old boy just turned 83 years old and, at that age, it’s hard to imagine him wielding an axe to chop down a bathroom door in the Overlook Hotel without frequent breaks for a Horlicks and a chocolate digestive.
The other trouble with Jack is that his most iconic roles have completely overshadowed a quite extraordinary run of other movies he starred in from the early Seventies until well into the Noughties. Here’s eighteen of our favourites from the man with the most sinister smile, and fastest receding hairline, in Hollywood history.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Jack’s finest hour is a one man tornado of a performance as McMurphy, a man so in tune with the futility of life and the pursuit of good times in order to conquer it, has to be locked up in an asylum for, essentially, being too sane. Every element of Jack’s anti-authoritarian, hedonistic, coiled-spring anger, pain and humour explodes into life here. And if the ending doesn’t make you cry, then you’re made of stronger stuff than most.
Five Easy Pieces
If you only watch one of Jack’s lesser known films, make it this one; a stone cold masterpiece from 1970 where he plays genius-pianist turned oil rig worker Bobby Dupea. Full of hobo lyricism and frequent lashings of rage, this is angry-young-Jack at his most eloquent. And if you ever get pissed off with bad service, the, diner scene is essential viewing for learning exactly how to complain, Nicholson-style.
The Shining
Jack and Stanley Kubrick may have only worked together once; but as modern horror films go, it’s a partnership that will probably never be beaten. Stalking the most terrifying carpets in cinema, Jack’s transformation from hotel caretaker to psychopathic axe-murderer is every bit as compelling and disturbing now as it was on release forty years ago.
Easy Rider
The movie that brought Jack into the big league of Hollywood A-listers and a veritable state-of-the-nation address to a country splitting at the seams between the mainstream and the counter-cultural. The soundtrack is perfection but Jack is even better as the alcoholic lawyer accompanying Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda on a fateful road trip to the decaying heart of the American dream.
Chinatown
High level corruption, a gangster who enjoys removing peoples noses and a lot of very cool linen suits, this complex but hugely rewarding work is one of Jack’s finest. Playing private dick Jake Gittes, he gets down and dirty in 1930s California investigating dodgy land grabs in this noir-ish thriller that requires repeated viewings to grasp every nuance and plot twist.
About Schmidt
Jack’s getting old and the perils of the advancing years are beautifully played out in this elegiac tale of a man facing up to his mortality and attempting to stop his daughter marrying a water bed salesman. Bleakly funny stuff.
The Last Detail
Jack downgrades the Harley’s of Easy Rider for a series of trains and buses in this oddball road trip movie where he plays grizzled Navy officer Buddusky, escorting a disgraced sailor back to the brig to be imprisoned. Have food on hand for this movie; the Italian sausage sandwiches consumed in a roadside diner are the most salivatingly good junk food ever seen on the big screen.
Hoffa
Long before Al Pacino played the role in The Irishman, Jack pulled off a masterful interpretation of America’s most infamous union boss. Barely seen upon release in 1992, this is a masterclass in Angry Jack at his most splenetic; nobody in cinematic history has called someone a ‘slimy little prick’ with such volcanic force as Jack does here.
The King Of Marvin Gardens
A bleak, windswept Atlantic City is the location for this low-key piece from 1972 with Jack putting in an unusually subdued performance as a late night talk show DJ in cahoots with his wheeler-dealer brother in a doomed, get-rich-quick scheme to start up a pleasure island business in Hawaii.
The Passenger
Michelangelo Antonioni directed this sparse, atmospheric, deeply strange drama starring Jack as a journalist trapped in an unnamed African warzone who swaps identities with a dead colleague. Maria Schinder smoulders perfectly as the love interest and the ending, a continuous seven minute shot, perfectly captures the decomposing vibe of one of Jack’s most criminally overlooked works.
The Border
Jack gets political in this disturbing, authentically grimy social-consciousness tale from 1982 where he plays Charlie, a border detective on the El Paso border who gets in deep with his colleagues who accept pay-offs from Mexican gang masters to let immigrants into the States. Look out for a superb turn by Harvey Keitel as Jack’s utterly unscrupulous fellow officer.
Ironweed
Jack has never looked worse on screen than as Francis Phelan, a chronically ill alcoholic boozing with his equally downtrodden lover Helen, played by Meryl Streep, in Depression era Albany. Hollywood millionaires playing down-and-out’s rarely convinces but Jack is strangely beguiling in a movie whose glumness can be wearing over its two and half hour length.
A Few Good Men
‘You can’t handle the truth!’ It’s worth watching this overlong military courtroom drama for this line alone, one of Jack’s greatest, as he plays Nathan Jessup, a viscous, Cold War military Colonel up against Tom Cruise as a hot-shot lawyer to defend a hazing incident in which a private died on his watch in Guantanamo Bay. Nicholson isn’t in the film much but when he is, his reptilian bravado is an absolute show stealer.
As Good As It Gets
Sorting out his M&M’s by colour is one of the more endearing traits of author and professional misanthrope Melvin Udall, played by Jack, who taunts his neighbours, throws dogs down incinerator chutes and finally finds a vinegary kind of romance with a waitress. Bigoted, mean and ripe for redemption, the plot is hardly inspired but you sense Jack adored playing this role.
The Departed
Jack’s natural swagger is put to perfect use here as he plays Boston mafia boss Frank Costello. Director Martin Scorsese brings his typically fast, loose touch to an inferno of violence in the badlands where Jack, and his monstrous leer, cavort with a severed hand, bordellos of women and a giant fake penis. Too bad about his appalling, shuttlecock shaped goatee though.
Carnal Knowledge
Cruel, funny and, by today’s standards, wildly un-woke, Jack shares the screen in this 1971 film with Art Garfunkel as Jonathan and Sandy, two college buddies entering bleak middle age and battling very different forms of male dysfunction around women. The dialogues between the two men are high-octane and perfectly pitched but Jack gets the best lines as a shallow Casanova in a crew neck sweater.
Prizzi’s Honor
With the menace of The Godfather and the family humour of The Sopranos rolled into two hours, ten minutes of taut, frequently funny drama, Jack’s rise to the top of the Prizzi mafia family as paunchy hitman Charley Partanna is farcical but yet oddly plausible. Easily one of Jack’s best 1980’s performances.
The Missouri Breaks
Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando in the same film? Lord only knows why this mother-lode of a double lead star billing has been forgotten. Jack plays a cattle rustler in 1880’s Montana whose nefarious deeds ignite the vengeance of Clayton (Brando), a psychotic hired gun with an Irish accent and a penchant for women’s clothing.
Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more delivered straight to your inbox.
SIGN UP
Need some positivity right now? Subscribe to Esquire now for a hit of style, fitness, culture and advice from the experts
SUBSCRIBE
![new york, ny march 09 louis theroux attends build series to discuss my scientology movie at build studio on march 9, 2017 in new york city photo by santiago felipegetty images](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-650477152-1607610424.jpg?crop=0.668xw:1.00xh;0.185xw,0&resize=360:* "Build Series Presents Louis Therox Discussing "My Scientology Movie"")
