Facing his own mortality even put Hollywood’s oldest playboy off women (briefly!).
Legendary Lothario Jack Nicholson had a major wake-up call while filming his latest movie, The Bucket List, in which he plays a filthy rich bachelor facing death.
Admitted to hospital just before the shoot, the actor who once boasted he made love seven times a night suddenly found himself facing his mortality after urgent surgery to remove a stone from his salivary gland.
Jack, who’s previously been involved with actresses Anjelica Huston, Rebecca Broussard and Lara Flynn Boyle, reveals how even his most beautiful lady-friends failed to ignite his passion while he fought in a hospital bed for two months to regain his health. Recovered from his brush with death, 70-year-old Jack counts his blessings while puffing on a Camel cigarette …
Who visited you when you were in hospital?
I can’t tell you that! I’ll tell you one thing, though — the last thing on my mind when my attractive lady friends may have come bringing me flowers was … I mean, I wasn’t thinking, “Come on, get over here among the tubes and oxygen tanks with me”!
What has got better with age for you?
I’ve certainly learned focus. That’s improved. I prioritise more. Without an innate system you’re kind of weaving your way through life. I’m more in touch with the idea this could be the last time. It’s more a part of your life at a certain stage in life. I have had many older friends in life who have since passed on and so on. It’s enriching. I knew through my teenage children, I knew — which I didn’t necessarily know through my first child — that this would be a boon in my life. I knew this so therefore it enriched my life in a more relaxed way. Striving minimises as you get older. People say ‘Oh you’re a risk-taker!’ and I always say ‘Risk taker? What are they going to do to me? Yell at me?!’ Where’s the risk? ‘Say you’re suddenly no good? Or you’re a swine?’ So you become informed, and you probably become blinder, and you probably become more accurate in your observations. Hopefully, my character has improved basically — not so much because of the striving — but because of life; it takes away certain alternatives as you move through it. You can’t be as vain in the mirror if you can’t see the mirror!
And your daughter Lorraine is off to university this year. How do you feel about that after visiting several campuses with her?
Well, first of all I did not go to college so I felt like a moron. What I will always remember is when Lorraine turned to me and said, ‘Look. I know that it’s only possible for me to go to these wonderful colleges that we’re visiting, because I worked hard in high school’. And I thought, you know, actors will never really be happy about themselves but this kind of honest self-appraisal on the up-side. But it was one of those great moments. Oh Thank God! Yes, I’m supportive, but it’s so wonderful that they’ve got their own point of view about it and it’s not all ‘Ooh, what’s wrong with me?’
Do you have a favourite joke?
Yes. A woman standing in front of the mirror says ‘God, my breasts are down to my waist, my stomach’s sliding and my ass.’ She turns to her husband and says ‘Jeez, I’m getting so depressed here, hubby? Is there anything you can say to me? I need to be cheered up?’ and he says ‘Well, certainly nothing wrong with your eyesight!’ I don’t like jokes as a rule cause Freud told me they’re seduction. And some people, once they start, they won’t stop. That’s it — they joke until you’re ready to kill yourself.
Can you relate to death being funny, like in this movie?
Only in a Fellini movie. Gallows humour makes us all laugh, so I guess it’s funny. And you can bet that the last thing on earth that you want to do will be the last thing on earth that you do.
Are you religious?
I resist all beliefs just like my character says it. I think beliefs take you out of the now. If you believe something it keeps you from experiencing what actually is. As the character says — I envy people who are totally convinced that there’s life after death and that there’s this and that and the other thing. But I’m too empirical about life. When I used to run, I definitely know I was praying also and I know I was thinking ‘up’ so I think everybody has what I call that ‘God sense’. Call it superstition. Call it what you will. But I’m also not going to waste my time saying that it doesn’t exist because I equally do not know that. But my main philosophy is to live in the now which is very difficult to do. Don’t leave something that you really want to do undone.
That’s surprising. The public doesn’t perceive you as a philosophical kind of guy?
It’s true. I’m not very Zen. But I’m not as tough as people think. I’m not a fighter. I’d just as soon go home.
What are your thoughts on Heath Ledger’s death given he will reprise your role as The Joker this year?
That’s awful. I warned him. I warn them about Ambien. I don’t take sleeping pills, but somebody said, ‘Take this, it’s mild.’ I then got a call in the middle of the night, an emergency, and almost drove off a cliff 50 yards from my house up in the mountains in Aspen.
Read more of this interview in Woman’s Day (on-sale February 11, 2008)
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