Title: JACK NICHOLSON: AS GOOD AS IT GETS.(DAILY BREAK)

Date: 12/25/1997; Publication: The Virginian Pilot; Author: Vincent, Mal

Byline: MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

JACK NICHOLSON, puffing the last remnants of a Camel butt, flashed that killer smile as he came into the room. Wearing a black vest over a black shirt, he looked wrinkled - as if he'd had a rough night. He rubbed his hand over the beginnings of a 5 o'clock shadow.

But the smile, lodged beneath those devilishly arched eyebrows, was neither sarcastic nor bitter, as it often is in his films.

``I was out at the Lakers game last night,'' he said. ``It's pretty early in the morning.'' It was 10 a.m.

``I don't go out that much,'' he explained. ``I don't enjoy it anymore. People go out to have a good time. I don't have a good time if I'm creating a scene. I never carry security with me and, usually, I never create a scene. I've always been a slider. I can slide in and out.''

He arched his famous brows to add, with a hint of mischievous smile, ``Oh, I still know HOW to make a scene. I can if I want to.''

Nicholson comes on like a man who has seen too much of life and has burnt out early. It's the same quality that is in many of his films - his badge of alienation. Since the 1970s, he's been an entire movie generation's symbol for the rebel who never quite surrendered. Through some of the most memorable roles in movie history (``Chinatown,'' ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' ``Five Easy Pieces,'' ``Batman,'' ``Terms of Endearment''), he has suggested that he knows the score and is beating ``the system'' at its own game. Coming along at a time when young moviegoers no longer quite believed that John Wayne could have done all those heroics, he was the new movie star for the disillusioned.

He still is.

At age 60, Nicholson is only half-tamed, at best. He rarely does interviews, but he's willing to show up at 10 a.m. to talk about ``As Good as It Gets,'' his ``romantic comedy'' that opens today.

``James L. Brooks is the best scriptwriter in the world,'' he said. ``When he said he wanted me to do an interview - well, I'm here.'' Nicholson won his second Oscar the last time he worked for director-writer Brooks, as the aging, womanizing astronaut in ``Terms of Endearment.''

The last time I talked to Nicholson was at the Trailways bus station in downtown Norfolk. The year was 1973 and he was dressed in a sailor suit, filming what became one of his most acclaimed roles, Buddusky, a shore patrolman escorting a young sailor from Norfolk to prison for an absurd crime in ``The Last Detail.''

In the bus station, Nicholson, then 35 and two years before he finally won the Oscar (for ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest''), was cocky. When The Virginian-Pilot photographer asked him to step outside for a picture, he quipped: ``If I was outside, OK. But I'm not outside. Haven't you ever heard of a flash bulb? We're making a picture here ourselves.''

The counter girl at the candy stand pointed out to a cop that Randy Quaid, playing the square sailor, was shoplifting Mounds bars. She was informed that it was a part of the movie's plot and that the movie company would reimburse her.

``It was a pretty good part,'' Nicholson said, 25 years later, smiling at some private joke.

His new release is a different type of movie. Though many of his films have been R-rated for sexual content, none has had a romantic focus. He isn't usually romantic or heroic. It is only for want of a more accurate label that ``As Good as It Gets'' is called a romantic comedy.

He plays Melvin Udall, a wealthy New York writer who is so acid-tongued that he has an insult for all occasions. He insults blacks, Jews, homosexuals - everyone. Audiences gasped at the premiere, but Nicholson admits he chuckled.

``I had the advantage of having read the entire script. I knew my job, and the film's job, was to redeem him,'' Nicholson said. ``I think he's the most lovable character I ever played. He takes his medicine.''

Brooks, who produced, directed and co-wrote the film, agrees, saying: ``I know Jack. He's beautiful in real life, but he's never shown this kind of vulnerability on screen. He is great to direct. On the first day of shooting, he said to me, `You can day anything to me.' He was a man of his word.''

``Well, I got the four-day work week through,'' Nicholson added proudly. ``In order to do this film, I told them I'd work just four days a week. They agreed.''

A typical day, according to Nicholson: Get up late, go through the mail, return all the calls and then hang out until it's time for a few rounds of golf, then play until dark. ``Then,'' he adds, ``if the Lakers are at home, I go to the ball game.''

What about his much-publicized romantic life. He smiles mischievously and tilts his head to the side like a hurt puppy to suggest, ``How could you ask that?''

After a moment's thought, he answered, ``I think they took the nerve out.''

Known for being a ladies' man, Nicholson had a 17-year relationship with actress Anjelica Huston that ended in 1990 when he revealed that actress Rebecca Broussard, his daughter's best friend, was carrying his child. He has two grown daughters, Jennifer and Lorraine, via his marriage to Sandra Knight, whom he married in 1961 and divorced in 1966. The new baby is Raymond. Nicholson and neighbor Warren Beatty, another long-time bachelor-turned-daddy, are rumored to push baby carriages together in their neighborhood.

``I don't remember pushing any baby carriage, but I know both Warren and I are very happy about the situation,'' he said.

He added, with a warning hint in his voice, ``No lady lives in my house presently.''

His house is known, though, to contain one of the most respected private art collections in existence - priceless masterpieces.

Born in Neptune, N.J., Nicholson was raised by his mother, the owner of a beauty parlor, after his alcoholic father deserted the family. ``I'm very polite,'' he said. ``I was raised in a mannerly way. Those other guys are parts I play.''

At age 17, he visited his sister in Los Angeles and got a job as an office boy at MGM's cartoon department. In his spare time, he trained with a group called the Players Ring Theater and made his stage debut in ``Tea and Sympathy'' in 1957. For TV, he had small jobs in such series as the ``Andy Griffith Show,'' ``Mr. Lucky'' and ``Hawaiian Eye'' before making his movie debut in 1958 in ``The Cry Baby Killer.'' More than a decade of B-budget quickies followed, mostly motorcycle and horror films, some of them produced by Roger Corman. Nicholson even produced and wrote some himself.

His big break came in 1969 when Rip Torn dropped out of ``Easy Rider'' and Nicholson replaced him in the role of a Southern lawyer who thumbs his nose at the Establishment to run off, via motorcycle, with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. He's been a star ever since and is the only actor to rival Kate Hepburn and Laurence Olivier for the largest number of Oscar nominations.

Coincidentally, both he and Fonda, the ``Easy Rider'' veterans, are likely to be Oscar nominees for best actor this year.

The epitome of the typical Jack Nicholson character is probably best expressed by a line he speaks as Robert Eroica Dupea, a classical pianist who has rejected the Establishment to work as a manual laborer in his 1970 film ``Five Easy Pieces.'' The character says: ``I move around a lot. Not because I'm LOOKING for anything, really. 'Cuz I'm getting away from things that get bad if I stay.''

In ``As Good as It Gets,'' his character is asked how he understands women so well. The character comments: ``I think of a man. Then I take away reason and accountability. That's a woman.''

It sounds, as does most of the movie, as if it was ad-libbed by Jack Nicholson.

``That's Jim Brooks' line,'' Nicholson said quickly. ``I didn't improvise anything in this movie. I often do some of my own writing. I still think like a writer. I tend to analyze everything, from beginning to end. But that's only if I could do it better. With this script, it was as good as it could get.''

At age 60, he isn't thrilled about the idea of birthdays. ``I ignore them,'' he said. ``I started in 1972 to simply eliminate the calendar. I don't record things by days and weeks. Oh, sure, I know I can't play juveniles anymore. But there are new kinds of parts that I've never played before that I can play now.''

He's aware that there is such a thing as ``the Jack Nicholson type'' around. His charisma established an image that is perhaps a bigger persona than any role he can play. ``Yeah, I've been aware of that for quite awhile,'' he said. ``That's why I never do talk shows.''

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in ``Mother Night'': ``We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.''

``Everyone is capable of one good performance,'' Nicholson said. ``You. Me. Anyone. But it's coming out every time with something different that counts.''

Jack Nicholson, the actor who sees life as vaguely ridiculous, has clearly, for three movie decades, touched a nerve with audiences. Through his laid-back approach to his roles he seems to be suggesting that because life is pointless, we might as well enjoy it on the way.

Jack Nicholson...

TRISTAR PICTURES

Jack Nicholson calls acid-tongued writer Melvin Udall ``the most lovable character I ever played.''

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