The Real Reason Jack Nicholson Disappeared From Hollywood

Most people think of retirement as one of life’s rites of passage, something akin to graduating from school or getting a promotion at a job. While some people have careers that treat retirement in this manner, there are many others for whom retirement is more of a state of mind than anything else. This is certainly true of an artist; some never seem to want to stop or slow down (may I remind you that The Rolling Stones just finished their latest tour this past July), while others feel that they don’t wish to wear out their welcome (Quentin Tarantino, for example, still insists that his next film shall be his last). Then there are other factors, such as changing cultural norms as well as the waxing and waning of opportunities as they dwindle with age. Of course, age itself can be a factor; bodies do inexorably decline, after all.

For Jack Nicholson, one of the greatest actors of his generation, his reasons for being out of the Hollywood game for going on 14 years now may include all of these factors. Or none of them; Nicholson has been a very private person ever since he stepped away from the limelight (see also: Gene Hackman), having only resurfaced briefly during a Los Angeles Lakers playoff game in 2023. While none of us can know the true, unequivocal reason why Jack Nicholson decided to disappear from Hollywood, what follows is a round-up of facts and events that very likely helped contribute to his decision to step back and take it easy.

Most people, especially actors, tend to not go out on top. There are a plethora of performers whose final films either have dubious reputations or otherwise seem somehow unworthy of them: Orson Welles and “Transformers: The Movie,” for instance. Then there are others whose last films are bombs or misfires, such as with Hackman appearing in 2004’s “Welcome to Mooseport,” which struggled to make back half of its already meager budget. Of course, while some actors find themselves struggling to make ends meet toward the end of their lives (see Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood” for a good detailing of how such a thing happened to the real Bela Lugosi), others simply strike out despite giving it their best, and perhaps they take it as a sign that now might be time to skedaddle.

That could be the case with Nicholson’s final film (to date) being 2010’s “How Do You Know,” a movie which has a 31% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes thanks to reviews that don’t just disapprove, but practically eviscerate the film, with people like Peter Bradshaw calling it “a fatuous and depressing parade of nothingness.” The film flopped at the box office, too, only making $48.7 million on a $120 million budget. Yet the film was far from a misfire on paper: “How Do You Know” is the fourth collaboration between Nicholson and prolific writer/director James L. Brooks, who previously directed Jack in such critical and commercial hits as “Terms of Endearment,” “Broadcast News,” and “As Good as it Gets.” Granted, there’s no such thing as a sure thing, and creative hot streaks don’t last forever, but the sheer impact of the failure of the film proportional to the talent involved may have made Nicholson think twice about continuing to make movies.

It’s also important to remember that Jack Nicholson began his career during one of the most creatively fertile periods in Hollywood history, with the actor coming into his own and becoming a star during the early 1970s and the New Hollywood movement. Nicholson was right at the forefront of that American New Wave, having close ties to the folks at BBS Productions, who were responsible for Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider,” co-starring Nicholson. Through films like “Five Easy Pieces,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “The Last Detail,” “Chinatown,” and others, Nicholson was privileged to be part of so many films that were not only critical and commercial successes but also pushed the medium forward in terms of depth and verve.

After “Jaws” and “Star Wars” introduced the blockbuster/genre era to Hollywood, Nicholson was one of the few New Hollywood luminaries who continued to thrive, thanks to his early association with producer/director Roger Corman. Nicholson easily moved from making gritty adult dramas to making films like “Batman” and “Wolf,” alternating such genre entries with high-profile prestige pictures like “A Few Good Men” and “Hoffa.” By the turn of the century, Nicholson began openly embracing his age on screen, starring in films like “About Schmidt” and “The Bucket List,” which was a commendable choice for a star of his level. Unfortunately, it possibly put him in a different category of typecasting, and that could’ve resulted in losing some opportunities for other starring roles. By the time Nicholson made “How Do You Know,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe had just started, and where some older actors like Robert Redford and William Hurt found purchase within the comic book movie wave, perhaps Nicholson felt he’d already been there, done that (because, well, he had).

While it’s possible that Nicholson saw the failure of “How Do You Know” as a signal that his time in the industry had come and gone, it’s more likely that Nicholson didn’t make one large decision to step back, but that rather his retirement was the result of a series of non-starters. Nicholson turned down several opportunities to make further films in the wake of “How Do You Know,” passing on “The Judge” (for the part that ended up going to Robert Duvall) as well as “42” (for the part that went to Harrison Ford). Even his old “Reds” director, Warren Beatty, couldn’t coax him into appearing in “Rules Don’t Apply,” and his old “About Schmidt” director, Alexander Payne, ended up making “Nebraska” with Bruce Dern instead of Nicholson. Even the prospect of revisiting one of his most perennially talked about roles, Jack Torrence in “The Shining,” wasn’t enough to get Nicholson back in the saddle again.

This meant that, for a number of years, Nicholson effectively appeared to be retired, even though he hadn’t announced he was or even necessarily decided he was. Sure, many filmmakers would’ve loved to work with him, and it’s not like Nicholson had been completely forgotten, but, indeed, his time spent off the screen had not helped his public or professional awareness. If Nicholson had taken a couple of the aforementioned roles or even just one of them, perhaps this article would not need to be written.

There’s another complication to Nicholson’s absence from movie screens during the period when he might still have continued working, and it’s unfortunate yet understandable. In 2013, The Guardian reported on a source telling gossip publications Radar Online and Star Magazine that Nicholson was suffering from memory loss and that he had to turn down all these scripts because he “can no longer remember the lines being asked of him.” Although such a condition would not be too surprising for a man in his ’70s, as the actor was at that time, there was the uncomfortable feeling that this news was coming from an unnamed source and not the man himself (or at least someone in his close orbit).

Sure enough, just a few weeks after the initial memory loss story broke, Nicholson spoke with The Sun in order to summarily refute these claims about his health. While Nicholson was as erudite and rascally as ever in that interview, the damage may have already been done. Perhaps as a result, studios, producers, or other dealmakers in Hollywood began thinking of Nicholson as potentially unreliable or problematic. This, coupled with Nicholson’s choosiness, likely painted a picture for the industry that became increasingly clear with each passing year: Jack Nicholson is not currently working.

The irony is that the truth behind Nicholson’s retirement isn’t at all tragic, conspiracy-filled, or complex. Nicholson simply seems to find much pleasure in living his life quietly, outside of Hollywood or even the public eye, and it’s for this reason that he isn’t interested in returning to the big screen. As a friend of his, record producer Lou Adler, told Marc Maron on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast last year, Nicholson is “doing whatever he really wants to do. He wants to be quiet. He wants to eat what he wants. He wants to live the life he wants.”

While it’s tempting to say for dramatic purposes that some scandal pushed Nicholson out of the limelight (be it about his health, his last movie being a bomb, or some other thing), it seems that this explanation is the Occam’s Razor regarding his disappearance from Hollywood. While it seems incredibly likely that the film career of Jack Nicholson is finished, life has taught us to never say never. That Lakers game appearance was only proof that Nicholson could surprise us, and turn up again when and where we least expect it. For now, we’ll just have to admit the only verifiable, completely certain truth: we don’t know Jack.