Jack's Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson - Softcover

McGilligan, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393313786 ISBN 13: 9780393313789

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996

Synopsis

"Volatile Jack Nicholson has found the perfect biographer in Patrick McGilligan, who gives us a rich, absorbing portrait of one of the greatest movie stars ever." ―Patricia Bosworth

No male American film star of the post-Brando era has demonstrated the talent, the charisma, the larger-than-life audacity, and the string of screen triumphs of Jack Nicholson. In Jack's Life, Patrick McGilligan, one of our finest film historians, has produced the definitive biography of this most private and public of stars, from his tangled Dickensian upbringing in New Jersey, his formative years as an actor and screenwriter, his near-accidental breakthrough to stardom in Easy Rider, and his string of great roles in Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Last Detail, The Shining, and other films that mark him as a searching, complex artist. Here as well is the often Rabelaisian life behind the smiling mask, the legendary romances and appetites for sex and drugs, the obsessions with money and control, and the perpetual restlessness.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick McGilligan has edited the acclaimed Backstory series and written distinguished biographies of film figures including George Cukor, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and, most recently, Orson Welles. He lives in Milwaukee.

From Kirkus Reviews

Long-awaited, first-class, admiring but unauthorized life of the most popular film actor since Brando--from the author of George Cukor (1991) and Robert Altman (1989). McGilligan could not get to Nicholson, or to many of his close friends, and so depended on those he could, on print interviews (Nicholson has been ``interviewed to death,'' says the author, who himself met or otherwise interviewed Nicholson several times for magazines), and on superior sleuthing in old court records, 1930's newspapers, phone books, and so on. He has undoubtedly turned up stuff about Nicholson's family even the actor didn't know, and Nicholson's veiled but tangled family life is one of Hollywood's knottiest. In 1974, a Time reporter researching a cover story on Nicholson (with Chinatown opening and The Fortune being filmed) unearthed the fact that the woman he thought was his mother was actually his grandmother and that his sister was his mother--a situation amazingly parallel to Chinatown's ``sister-mother'' theme. Nicholson had carefully built up an image of truthful acting and prided himself publicly that ``my family was always big into honesty....'' This revelation caused him many tears, especially since everyone who might have told him something about his mystery father was dead. A native of Asbury Park, Nicholson spent his first 11 years in TV and films as a ``younger leading man'' in duds such as The Cry Baby Killer and Roger Corman schlock epics before his breakthrough in Easy Rider. The still unmarried father of two recent children, Nicholson's constant adultery while professing otherwise to Anjelica Huston for 14 years adds much paprika to McGilligan's book. The thoughtful Nicholson rasp adds vividness to every page. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0393313786
• ISBN 13: 9780393313789
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 512