Title: SMART ALECK JACK NICHOLSON'S UNABASHED OPENNESS PUTS HONESTY IN EVERY ROLE.(Entertainment/Weekend/Spotlight)

Date: 12/27/1997; Publication: Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO);

Byline: Luaine Lee Scripps Howard News Service

BEVERLY HILLS -- Jack Nicholson used to carry a clipping from his hometown newspaper that his grandmother had given him.

``It was the definition of a smart aleck,'' he recalls. ``A smart aleck is a person who doesn't realize that it's what they learn after they know it all that counts.''

By anybody's reckoning, Nicholson should know it all by now.

An actor of enviable reputation for movies such as Terms of Endearment, The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nicholson figures that being at the peak of your game is not the same thing as being on top.

``The fact of the matter is, you come to every picture at `A,' '' he says. ``You don't get credit for something you did before, in my department. You don't say, `Well, I've done this, I no longer have to do A, B, C, D.' It doesn't work in my job.''

What works for Nicholson is his unflappable honesty.

Audiences see it without knowing it. Directors count on it.

James L. Brooks, who directs Nicholson in As Good as It Gets, which opened Christmas Day, observes: ``Jack has an openness, vulnerability, originality - as a man and as a guy who thinks about life. He's the most philosophical guy I've ever met.''

Whether Nicholson is playing a manic astronaut, a Mafia hit man or a demonic killer, he finds acting irresistible.

``I've done a lot of other jobs in the movies, but I don't know if I could have done anything else and made my way in life but be an actor,'' he says.

``I mean, I have a nice aptitude and a good brain . . . but I like the specific action of doing it. It's challenging. You don't get to ride on your laurels. That's the first symptom of an actor going wrong,'' he says, leaning the back of his head into his clasped hands.

``When you go to really analytical acting study, you have to deal with the fact that everybody wants to be liked. You gotta deal with that as part of your craft - not just as a social thing or it's nice not to be a snob. But it affects the way you work,'' he says.

``I like that pointer at honesty. You have to be very honest with yourself to do my job well. And you're not going to like everything about yourself. If you start hiding what you don't like, you're not going to be in the best position to do your job.''

Not one to hide either on screen or off, Nicholson, 60, has arrived at this point in a curious way. He was raised by his grandmother, who he thought was his mother. He learned the truth - that his ``sister'' was really his mother - when he was 37.

He was married to former actress Sandra Knight, with whom he has a daughter - ``the biggest thing that ever happened to me in my adult life,'' he says.

He enjoyed a nearly 17-year relationship with actress Anjelica Huston (whom he still calls ``deep class''). He has two children, ages 5 and 7, with Rebecca Broussard (with whom he's logged an on-and-off relationship).

Becoming a father at 53 was no big shock.

``I've been pretty consistently a daddy for a long time,'' he grins. ``I was ready for it. But as a matter of fact, it is great for me. I've got more time. I understand them minimally better.''

Nicholson has been open about his drug use and about the parade of women who've colored his life.

He worked at various jobs in Hollywood before he became an actor and was married with a child before he appeared in his first movie.

Those first few years can be debilitating for an actor, he thinks. ``Any struggling actor is in a certain kind of desperation. That's the real danger period for an actor. You have to choose: `Well, there are many other ways I could make my way in life. I'm smart, I'm this and that and the other thing. I'm nonetheless gonna risk my 20s on the fact that I'm going to be able to do this.''

For Nicholson it was worth the risk. He remembers the screening of Easy Rider at the Cannes Film Festival as a significant turning point.

``I think this mythical thing about the overnight success doesn't really exist,'' he says.

``I had been to Cannes a couple of times before, hustling movies of my own as a producer, so I knew the audience very well. I knew the film very well. I sat in the audience and when my character came on the screen and the film exploded - I think maybe because I'd been doing it from so many angles for so long - maybe I'm the only person who ever sat in that seat and said, `I am a movie star!' ''

By that time he'd been acting for 12 years.

He wasn't qualified to do much else, he thinks.

``I've been doing it so long it's my life by now and, for no other reason, I'd better like it.''

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