Jack Nicholson
American actor and filmmaker (born 1937)
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- I don't believe in God now,I can still work up an envy for someone who has a faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience."
- My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch
- I'll tell you one thing: Don't ever give anybody your best advice, because they're not going to follow it.
- Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get.
- With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60.
- I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself.
- Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop.
- In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.
- When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award.
- I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do.
- We were moving to a freer society before AIDS. Most people who investigated this knew that if you were not shooting up or getting f***ed in the heinie, you were as likely to get AIDS as you were to have a safe fall on your head while walking down Wilshire Boulevard. But you could not proselytize this view. The facts were almost useless. You couldn't give a woman the facts and have her respond, 'Oh, all right.'
- What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's ALL that counts.
- The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.
- Age is the first limitation on roles that I've ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.
- I would be so happy if I didn't smoke, for a lot of reasons. I can't believe that I can't break the habit. I don't want to be lying around, dying in Cedar's Sinai Hospital and thinking that I was as stupid enough, a man who is as petrified of dying as I am, to have done it to myself. I'm a real fraidy-cat about mortality.
- There is no way you can get people to believe you on screen if they know who you really are through television.
- I think it is very unattractive for me to be seen fawning over little, tiny girls. I didn't feel that for a long time but now I do. If I could slip them out the back entrance wrapped in a blanket, that's a different story. (February 2004)
- I only take Viagra when I'm with more than one woman.
- Explaining his controversial remarks on the death of Heath Ledger: What I actually said was, 'I warned them.' I had a bad experience with those sleeping pills that Ledger apparently took. I took one of these pills and had just gone to sleep when I had a phone call to go to an emergency at a friend's house. I jumped up, went outside and some time later woke up on the driveway. It sounds amusing but I live in the mountains and it could of been worse. I didn't know Heath Ledger, but I know those pills.
- Every director implored me, "Jack, can't you talk a little bit faster?" It was like a hot button for me and I would become hateful. So when Roman started to say it, I began and he said, "Jack, this movie is 100-and-something pages long. To have a movie that is screen able, you'll have to talk a little faster". (Roman Polanski directed him in Chinatown (1974)).
- I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.
- I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny.
- (On turning down the role played by Robert Redford in The Sting (1973)) "I liked the period, the whole project and I knew it would be commercial. But at the time, I needed to put my energies into a movie that really needed them. I needed to take a risk".
- In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's sure been tough on my nails.