Jack Nicholson : The Life and Times of an Actor on the Edge

Provides a close look at the life of one of America's finest actors, including detailed information on such issues as his illegitimate children, his sex-and-drug binges, the murder of his half-sister, and his extraodinary film career.

If Spoto represents the high end of celebrity bios, then Thompson takes the middle ground--plenty of gossip but some substance, too. He has some good primary-source material, especially the words of Susan Anspach, the mother of one Nicholson's eight illegitimate children. He also has a theory: that Nicholson, a man who grew up believing his mother was his sister and his grandmother was his mother, is as tormented as he is brilliant and that his career as a womanizer (occasionally a brutal one) is more about his family than about his girlfriends. The book, which begins with the wedding of Nicholson's friend Sean Penn, moves smoothly through Jack's fragmented childhood and his 40-year movie career, with almost as much attention paid to Nicholson's drug use as to his films. Contradictory is certainly the word that comes to mind as the reader turns the pages. Nicholson comes across as kind, petty, generous, vindictive, happy, and miserable. It is just these contradictions that make him--and by extension the book--so fascinating. Ilene Cooper