I once read an interview with Roddy McDowell in which he stated that actors have three stages in their careers, and that they are not always successful in each. In the beginning you win them by simply being charming. You’re young and beautiful, have an impish smile, whatever. Then you mature and the little gimmicks that charmed audiences don’t quite cut it.
In the last stage you are an elder statesman of the silver screen and the roles are of an entirely different class as you re-invent yourself once more. Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood and Michael Caine come to mind here… and Jack Nicholson.
Nicholson is an actor who by any measure has had a charmed career in the film industry. And deservedly so when you remember the range of memorable characters he has invented since catching our attention as George Hanson in Peter Fonda’s Easy Rider. Who can forget J.J. Gittes in Chinatown, or Randall P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
