Forever an original -- if not forever young

Warren Beatty has always relied on Jack Nicholson for sage counsel, so when Beatty was having trouble deciding who should play the pivotal part of Eugene O’Neill in “Reds,” he turned to his trusted pal for advice. “Jack said, ‘What do you think the part needs?’ ” Beatty recalls. “And I said, ‘Above all else, you need to believe unquestionably that the character can take the leading lady away from me.’ ”

Beatty laughs. “And Jack said, ‘Well, then there’s only one person who can play the part!’ ”

And play it Jack did. Just imagine: For three decades, when people in Hollywood have gone hunting for an actor who can bring a unique verve and originality to a starring role, Nicholson’s name has almost always been at the top of the list. With roughly 60 films under his belt since he made his debut in the 1958 Roger Corman B-movie “Cry-Baby Killer,” he’s boxed the compass, playing an astonishing range of archetypal Americans, including biker hellion and small-town lawyer, ex-astronaut and corrupt labor leader, unfaithful husband and private eye, Navy petty officer and Marine colonel, ax murderer and TV news anchorman, ex-concert pianist and former baseball player, rebellious mental patient and the devil, Mafia enforcer and president of the United States. Oh, and of course, the Joker.

As Jim Brooks, who directed Nicholson in two of his three Oscar-winning performances (“Terms of Endearment” and “As Good as It Gets”) put it: “I think, for a long time, there haven’t been many people who weren’t thinking of Jack for everything they wrote. I remember having an academic debate with a friend over the best all-around actor and I won, picking Jack, by saying, ‘Who else could play both parts in “The Odd Couple”?’ ”

The Academy Award best actor nomination Nicholson received Tuesday for his role in “About Schmidt,” in which the 65-year-old actor plays a newly retired insurance executive confronting the emptiness of his life, is the 12th Oscar nomination of his career. As the front-runner in the best actor race, he has the opportunity to earn an Oscar in a record-setting four consecutive decades, having won his first best actor statuette in 1976 for his role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” (Nicholson, who is currently shooting a Nancy Meyers-directed comedy about a music mogul who falls for his girlfriend’s mother, declined interview requests after the nominations.)

In “About Schmidt,” Nicholson tamps down his natural ebullience, giving an unsentimental, poker-faced performance, as if he’d been watching a stack of Buster Keaton DVDs preparing for the part. Most actors would’ve felt the need to do more showing off, but Nicholson almost revels in his character’s flat, colorless exterior, barely hinting at the muffled desperation of a man suddenly stirred, by his retirement, to all of life’s lost opportunities.

His acting teacher, the late Jeff Corey, said no one was more dedicated to his craft. But Nicholson was also blessed with charisma. “About Schmidt” producer Harry Gittes, who’s been a friend for 40 years, remembers driving around with Nicholson in the early ‘60s in the actor’s yellow VW convertible. “He’d pull up at a red light, smile at a bunch of girls and with one smile, he had ‘em. It not only worked, it never not worked. Jack had it with everybody. I sometimes felt my mother liked Jack more than me.”

Secrets of his success

In a fickle pop culture increasingly dominated by 15-minute celebrities, Nicholson has long basked in the public’s affection, both as a larger-than-life star and as a serious actor. At a time where most of his contemporaries have peaked, retired or fallen from grace, Nicholson remains, if not forever young, forever original. He’ll be back on screen this April playing a crackpot shrink in the Adam Sandler film “Anger Management.” There are many wonderful things to be said about Warren Beatty and Robert Redford, who are both the same age as Nicholson, but could you possibly imagine either 65-year-old star taking second billing to Adam Sandler?

Theories abound as to why Nicholson has aged so well. He came to stardom relatively late -- he was 32 when “Easy Rider” became a sensation -- allowing him years to refine his craft in obscurity. Free of the vanity of a conventionally handsome leading man, he’s played a wide assortment of character parts that have extended his acting life. And he has made a point of working with great directors, including John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Hal Ashby, Mike Nichols, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski, Milos Forman, Brooks and Beatty.

In 1994, not long after he played hot-tempered Jimmy Hoffa in “Hoffa,” Nicholson made news by taking a golf club to the hood of a BMW that cut him off in traffic. His most unforgettable screen moments have been explosions of mayhem, whether it was strangling Nurse Ratched in “Cuckoo’s Nest,” slapping Faye Dunaway silly in “Chinatown,” blowing up at the bartender who won’t serve his young recruit in “The Last Detail,” going berserk in “The Shining,” erupting on the witness stand in “A Few Good Men” or, perhaps most famously, trying to order toast in “Five Easy Pieces.”

Nicholson once said, “If you saw my work, and met me, you wouldn’t be shocked.” Growing up in Neptune, N.J., Nicholson was a ruffian. “I was the toughest kid in the area,” he has said. “I have tremendous violence in me.” He has always played rootless, dissatisfied characters, as befits his origins.

An illegitimate child, he unwittingly grew up in a family of actors, since he was raised by his grandparents, who posed as his mom and dad, while his real mother pretended to be his sister. He has often played men who aren’t who they seem, as in “Five Easy Pieces,” in which he’s a concert pianist passing himself off as an oil worker. His first production company was named Proteus, after the sea god who could change his appearance at will. “I play a lot of deceptive characters,” he once told a reporter. “I like the disguise element of the theatrical experience.”

Robert Evans was casting the part of Barbra Streisand’s half-brother in “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” when Nicholson, still a little-known actor, showed up for an audition. “He left before I could get his name and I told everybody, ‘I want the guy with the smile. Find the smile!’ He had a billion-dollar smile.”

Cracking wise

Nicholson has another quality that has often been overlooked -- native intelligence. As Gittes says: “He’s smart about being smart.” When the two men were at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Gittes found Nicholson holed up in his hotel room, watching actors give press conferences, seeing what worked and what didn’t. “When Jack’s turn came, he was so prepared. He gave a virtuoso performance of an actor giving a press conference.”

Evans says that when they began working on “The Two Jakes,” Nicholson read the script twice and had it entirely memorized. “He can tell you what Phil Rizzuto batted in 1938 and then move on to Mozart and Napoleon,” Evans says. “I know Henry Kissinger and Elie Wiesel, but no one I know has Jack’s mind. For someone from a poor Irish background, he’s better educated than any Brown University professor.”

Brooks says he couldn’t have been more of a first-time director when he started shooting “Terms of Endearment.” “I was fumbling around when Jack did this great thing. He said, simply, ‘You can say anything to me.’ ” Behind schedule one day, Brooks was trying to complete a lengthy scene at a location that was directly in the flight pattern for the Houston airport. Knowing the director needed to move on, Nicholson not only nailed his monologue, but when a plane appeared overhead, he casually glanced up to the sky, incorporating the plane’s flight into the scene.

Asked to grow hair and fangs in Mike Nichols’ “Wolf,” Nicholson happily obliged. In “Terms of Endearment,” he developed an ample paunch and allowed it to be shot in profile before his love scene with Shirley MacLaine. As Brooks recalls, “Jack would stick his stomach out and say, ‘You pick -- how much?’ ”

Nicholson’s attention to detail is legend. In “Chinatown,” his shirts were monogrammed JJG (for J.J. “Jake” Gittes) above the pocket, even though he never took off his jacket. In “Terms of Endearment,” he always wore an expensive astronaut’s watch. To play the Joker, he read Nietzsche.

Brooks recalls having a prolonged debate with Nicholson on one of their films over whether the actor should chew gum on screen. Nicholson let the director prevail, but not without a signature display of sly humor.

“Jack wanted to chew gum, but I didn’t think it was right,” Brook says. “So finally he relented, saying, ‘Tell you what, I’ll be chewing gum, but you’ll never catch me at it.’ ”

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The many moods of Jack Nicholson:

With “About Schmidt,” Jack Nicholson has now received 12 Oscar nominations, with three wins already. The roles have been as varied as his hairstyles.