Jack Nicholson, 88, is Still “Reading Scripts" and Not Retired

While his fellow ‘70s greats, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, are still out there acting in films, Jack Nicholson, 88, has more or less decided to quit movies in favor of a more solemn life on Mulholland Drive, his home since 1975. Or so we thought.

It’s been 15 years since Nicholson appeared in a film, the last time being James L. Brooks’ “How Do You Know,” a romcom starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson. In 2017, he was attached to star in a remake of the German comedy “Toni Erdmann, but he has since dropped out, derailing the project in the process.

Brooks, a good friend of Nicholson’s, is now telling THR that he doesn’t believe the actor has retired from acting, and that he might have at least one more film left in him:

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jack work again. I mean, it’s been a hunk of time but I don’t know. Maybe it could be the right thing. He’s reading scripts all the time, I think.

Nicholson never actually announced his retirement, but, given that he’s now 88 years old, the chances of ever seeing him on-screen again seem fairly low. With that said, Brooks seems to be indicating that we shouldn’t completely scratch off a return. Maybe Nicholson could appear in his next film, which Brooks plans to write and direct after his latest, “Ella McCay” gets released in the fall.

In a September 2013 Vanity Fair article, Nicholson stated that he did not consider himself retired, merely that he was now less driven to “be out there anymore.” However, just last month, the actor did make a surprise cameo on the SNL 50 telecast.

Nicholson is a national treasure, and in the pantheon of the great post-60s American actors, I’d put him right up there with Pacino, De Niro and Hackman. His charismatic, loose style of acting has been copied, but never duplicated — the sardonic drifter, the eternal outsider, a man who rebelled against a societal structure.

There are too many great performances in his vast and eclectic filmography: “Five Easy Pieces,” “Chinatown,” “The Last Detail” “The Passenger,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest,” “The Shining,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “Broadcast News,” “Batman,” “A Few Good Men,” “As Good As it Gets,” “The Pledge,” “About Schmidt,” “The Departed” … I could probably add another dozen roles. Legend.