Jack Nicholson (Photo/wiki)
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an actor, director, and producer. He is internationally renowned for his often dark-themed portrayals of neurotic characters.
When Nicholson first came to Hollywood, he worked as a gofer for animation legends Hanna-Barbera.
Seeing his talent as an artist, they offered Nicholson a starting level position as an animation artist.
However Nicholson's desire to become an actor out weighed being an animator artist, so he declined.
After a spot opened up in Fonda and Hopper's Easy Rider, it led to Nicholson's first big acting break. Nicholson played hard-drinking lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination.
Nicholson made his film debut in a low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer, in 1958, playing the title role.For the following decade, Nicholson was a frequent collaborator with the film's producer, Roger Corman. Corman directed Nicholson on several occasions, most notably in The Little Shop of Horrors, as a sado-masochistic dental patient (Wilbur Force), and also in The Raven, The Terror and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
With 12 nominations (8 for Best Actor and 4 for Best Supporting Actor), Jack Nicholson is the most nominated male actor in Academy Awards history, Screen Actors Guild and other Academy winners, such as Peter Jackson, and Slumdog Millionaires.
Early Nicholson roles, not possible to mention all, included Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973), for which he was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and the classic Roman Polanski noir thriller, Chinatown (1974) (he was Oscar-nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for both films). He also starred in The Who's Tommy (1975), directed by Ken Russell, and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975).
Nicholson won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three), and second to Katharine Hepburn for most acting wins overall (four).
Jack Nicholson is also one of only two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting (either lead or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s (the other one being Michael Caine). He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award.
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