Becoming Jack Nicholson

One of the most celebrated figures in the world of cinema, Jack Nicholson has appeared in more than fifty films, stamping each with his larger-than-life presence. Because Nicholson brought a set of traits and attitudes with him to his roles that the actor and filmmakers variously inflected, audiences associated certain characteristics with his screen identity. At times his rebelliousness was celebrated as an act of self-expression against an oppressive system (Five Easy Pieces, The Passenger, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and at others it was revealed as an absurd masculine fantasy (The Last Detail, Chinatown, and The Shining). In each, the actor embodies an inherent tension between a desire to make authentic choices and a pressure to conform to societal expectations of manly behavior. In Becoming Jack Nicholson: The Masculine Persona from Easy Rider to The Shining, Shaun Karli looks at the actor's on-screen presence in eight key films between 1969 and 1980. Karli...