Success Is Habit-Forming

No question, the guy was different. A drawly, vaguely rural voice that started somewhere way back in his throat and almost didn't make it past his lips; a quizzical, unblinking gaze that tended to make other eyes turn away in embarrassment; a perfect, foot-wide smile that flashed on and off like the Eddystone Light. The casting director asked a few uneasy questions, paused, then blurted: "I don't know what we'd ever use you for, but if we need you, we'll need you very badly."

That was Jack Nicholson's first try for an acting job, and it was 14 years before he was needed that badly. Then, as the one articulate, genuinely comic character in Easy Rider, Nicholson became a leading participant in the upheaval that has caused Hollywood, for better or for worse, to churn out an endless series of "relevant," youth-oriented little movies. The role won him the New York Film Critics' Award, an Academy Award nomination and a leading role in Director Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge. In the meantime he is appearing in Five Easy Pieces in a starring role that should win him his second consecutive Oscar nomination.

Sandra After School. How can overnight success take 14 years? Probably because Nicholson, 33, used to be the sort who'd rather let things happen than make them happen. He began acting in high school in Neptune, N.J., but not out of any burning ambition. "I got sort of talked into it by a teacher," he says. "And all the chicks that I liked were doing plays--rehearsals after school with Sandra, that kind of thing."

Having skipped a couple of grades, he decided to kill a year between high school and college, went to live with his sister in Los Angeles. He worked in a toy store, shot pool, and went to the track. Finally, he took a job as office boy in MGM's cartoon department "so I could watch movie stars." Then he began to study acting at the now defunct, professional Players Ring Theater. From then on, all thoughts of college vanished. He moved on to TV's Matinee Theater, and in 1958 he made his first movie, Cry Baby Killer.

That began a string of 18 flicks too terrible to mention. "I either played the clean-cut boy next door," he recalls, "or the murderer of a family of at least five." He also wrote a few himself: The Trip, starring Peter Fonda; Head, with the Monkees; and two westerns, which he also produced, made for $75,000 apiece. Nicholson personally carried them in hatboxes to European film festivals, where they won come acclaim. Still, they are too arty and paralytic for U.S. audiences; in The

Shooting, for example, the hero ends up shooting another character who seems to be the hero himself.

Until Easy Rider, Nicholson seemed destined to drift endlessly in and out of second-rate horror, motorcycle and drug movies with his friends Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Easy Rider could have been, of course, just another in the cycle cycle. Fortunately for Nicholson, Rip Torn, originally cast as the Southern lawyer, bowed out and Nicholson's friends from Head, Producer Bert Schneider and Director Bob Rafelson, suggested Jack for the role. "I went immediately to work on the dialect. Drew a lot on L.B.J." For the campfire scene, his favorite, he says: "I smoked about 155 joints. Keeping it all in mind stoned, and playing the scene straight and then becoming stoned--it was fantastic."

Following Rider, Nicholson carefully avoided typecasting--so carefully that he played a barely noticeable role as a rich hippie with Barbra Streisand in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, a part he took "for the bread." He admits: "All I am in the movie is bad." He has since directed his first film, Drive, He Said. He regained his footing as an actor in Five Easy Pieces, in which he played a gifted pianist-turned-supergypsy oil rigger. About his role, Nicholson expounds: "I have a very strong political propagandist feeling about my work. If you can change the way people feel and think, then you're a long way toward solving their problems. Pieces undermines traditional middle-class behavior."

Throwing Steaks. Once (in 1961) he was married, and has a seven-year-old daughter. Now he has a capsule description of his life: "I read, swim, go out, have love affairs." The old Nicholson "used to rant a lot of politics" and had a temper that went off like a Roman candle. A waitress in Hollywood once brought him a well-done steak and proceeded to claim that it was rare. Nicholson protested, spluttered, and then --splat!--the steak hit the restaurant ceiling. "I don't throw steaks around the dining room any more," says Nicholson. His outbursts nowadays have a purpose. Recently, while filming in Vancouver, Nicholson was out walking and stopped at a country club for a glass of water. The bartender refused because Nicholson was not a member. "Are you trying to tell me," Nicholson shouted, "that as a human being you're refusing to give me a glass of water?" Later he said of the tirade: "I did it so that if he ever thinks about it again, he will feel a little pain --maybe it will change him."

Nicholson's self-indulgences these days are pretty much under control. While on the set in Canada, he says, "we all took a vow to stay off pot. I'm the only one who's stuck to it. I'd been smoking it every day for 15 years and I'd been wondering if it was habit-forming. Well, it's not." Nowadays, the only habit he has to worry about is success.

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