Jack Nicholson
Actor, producer, director
Born: April 22, 1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2010: Arts & Entertainment

Yes, Jack Nicholson is one of the most-honored actors of all time. Yes, his three Oscar wins are tied for the most of any male actor. But the numbers and plaudits only tell part of the story. The breadth and depth of the characters he portrayed, as well as his own innate charm and outsized personality, are what made Nicholson the biggest movie star of his generation.

The son of an unmarried showgirl mom, Nicholson was raised in Neptune City, mainly by his maternal grandparents. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Spring Lake. Nicholson attended Manasquan High School where, according to some accounts, he was voted “class clown” in 1954.

In 1957, Nicholson joined the California Air National Guard; he served until the end of his enlistment in 1962. Living in California, he began to pursue his interest in an acting career. After training with the Players Ring Theater, he made his film debut in 1958 in the teen drama “The Cry Baby Killer,” directed by Roger Corman, noted for his low-budget productions. For the next decade, Corman featured Nicholson in a series of cut-rate films, most notably a campy farce, “The Little Shop of Horror,” in which Nicholson emoted wildly as a masochistic dentist.

With no juicy roles on the horizon, Nicholson found his initial Hollywood success as a writer of such eventual cult classics as “The Trip” (1967), which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper; and “Head” (1968), which he co-wrote as a vehicle for the Monkees. Almost out of nowhere, Nicholson’s big break as an actor came in 1969, when he reteamed with Fonda and Hopper for “Easy Rider,” a counter-culture blockbuster that featured Nicholson as an alcoholic, but affable country lawyer.

Nicholson’s folksy performance in “Easy Rider” earned him a best-supporting actor nomination. Meaty roles followed. He played the flawed and impulsive anti-hero in the drama “Five Easy Pieces” (1970); a tough military cop in “The Last Detail” (1973); and a dispassionate private eye in “Chinatown” (1974); Nicholson earned a best-actor Oscar nomination for each. Finally, in 1975, Nicholson won his first best-actor Oscar as the charismatic mental patient Randle Patrick McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which also won the best-picture Oscar.

By this point, Nicholson, the former B-movie actor, had become Hollywood’s biggest star. Subsequent roles give testimony to his box-office clout and his range as an actor, including “The Shining” (1980); “Reds” (1981); “Terms of Endearment” (1983), for which he won a best-supporting actor Oscar; “Prizzi’s Honor” (1985); “Heartburn” (1986); “The Witches of Eastwick” (1987); and “Batman” (1989), in which he played the psychotic villain, the Joker.

In 1992, Nicholson earned another supporting-actor Oscar nomination for the military courtroom drama “A Few Good Men.” Portraying the hotheaded Col. Nathan R. Jessup, Nicholson sneered perhaps his most memorable film line: “You can’t handle the truth.” In 1997, he won his third Oscar for his starring role as a mean-spirited novelist in the romantic comedy “As Good as it Gets.”

Nicholson’s later film roles of note include “About Schmidt” (2002) and “The Departed” (2006). During his career, he also directed several films, including “Drive, He Said” (1971) and “Goin’ South” (1978). In all, he appeared in some 80 films and earned 12 Oscar nominations, as well as numerous Golden Globe nominations (with six wins), dozens of film critics’ awards, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.