Title: 23. Jack Nicholson: ENVELOPE PUSHER, OFF-KILTER ROMEO, CERTIFIABLE GENIUS.(The 100 Greatest Entertainers)(Brief Article)

Date: 11/1/1999; Publication: Entertainment Weekly; Author: Fretts, Bruce

"Before I worked with Jack, I was having a drunken argument with another comedy writer about who was the best actor alive," recalls James L. Brooks, who directed Nicholson's Academy Award-winning turns in Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets. "I was arguing that Jack was, and I finally won my point when I said Jack could play either role in The Odd Couple."

What better testament to the astonishing breadth of Nicholson's talent than to imagine him as germ-phobe Felix and superslob Oscar? After all, he's pulled off parts as disparate as Eugene O'Neill (Reds) and the Joker (Batman). "You don't want to do one job and be dead--play one character and that's it," Nicholson told EW in 1998. "If I could've tolerated that, I would've been one of these billion-dollars-rich television actors."

The actor's wallet hardly suffered: He took home $50 million for Batman alone. But if not for Rip Torn, Nicholson could very well have ended up a TV staple. Torn had intended to play Easy Rider's pot-smoking lawyer, but he dropped out, giving Nicholson--a then-struggling actor in guest spots (The Andy Griffith Show) and B flicks--the role that made him a star. (Would it have been so bad if the two had switched careers? Think of Nicholson as Artie on The Larry Sanders Show.) Nicholson's first of three Oscars came for his exhilarating performance in the mental-hospital opus One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), a role that highlights his greatest gift: the ability to bring the lightest touch to the heaviest material. "He's a very intense, focused actor who can play a powerful dramatic role and at the same time bring an ironic humor to it," says low-budget legend Roger Corman, who introduced Nicholson to movie audiences in 1958's The Cry Baby Killer. Adds Brooks: "Everybody senses that he gets the joke. He doesn't take himself or anything else too seriously."

Even his career. In 1975, the Neptune, N.J., native teasingly quipped that he'd reached his goal "to be considered for everything." But the truth is, despite more power than perhaps any other actor in the business, he's never turned complacent. Witness his willingness to take on such tough sells as the Depression- era character study Ironweed and the Sean Penn-directed downer The Crossing Guard. "There's a tendency when you're a star to play it safe," says Brooks. "Jack doesn't know that road."

Perhaps the best way to view Nicholson is as a bridge between old Hollywood glamour and modern-day grit. He can be as crustily charming as James Cagney ("You make me want to be a better man," he tells Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets), and as cartoonishly ferocious as a WWF wrestler (his "You can't handle the truth!" rant in A Few Good Men). "There's a grace to him, but he's not afraid of the devil inside him," Brooks explains. "We all would like to accept ourselves like that."

--BRUCE FRETTS

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