Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is a highly successful American method actor. He is best known for portraying antagonistic, cynical, neurotic and aggressive characters. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, and has been nominated for an Academy Award a dozen times, winning three of them. He has also won seven Golden Globe Awards.
 
He was born John Joseph Nicholson in New York, New York, although until 1974 he had thought his place of birth was his hometown, Neptune, New Jersey. A journalist's research uncovered what apparently had happened: the woman he had always thought of as his mother was actually his grandmother, who had arranged to raise him as her own child. She did this because he was actually the illegitimate offspring of her daughter, a woman whom Nicholson thought was his older sister. Because of this fact Nicholson is pro-life and has spoken out about it saying, "I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life."
 
Nicholson started his career as an actor, writer, and producer, working for and with Roger Corman. This included his screen debut in The Cry Baby Killer (1958), where he played a juvenile delinquent who panics after shooting two other teenagers, and Little Shop of Horrors.
 
His work with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on the LSD-fueled The Trip led to his real break. That film led to a small supporting role in Easy Rider (1969), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. A Best Actor nomination came the following year for his persona-defining role in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which includes his famous chicken salad dialogue about getting what you want.
 
Other early movies he is known for include Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he received his first Oscar, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Nicholson won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Terms of Endearment (1984).
 
The 1989 Batman, where Nicholson played the supervillain The Joker, was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal earned Nicholson about US$50 million http://www.filmaction.com/hollywood%20eh.htm. For his role as Col. Nathan R. Jessep in A Few Good Men (1992), a dark movie about a murder in a military unit, he received yet another nomination by the Academy. He would win his next Oscar for his role as the neurotic lead in the romance As Good As It Gets (1997).
 
The September 11, 2001 attacks led Nicholson to focus on comedies. In About Schmidt (2002), Nicholson portrayed a man who questions his own life after his retirement and the death of his wife. The deeply emotional, slow film stands in sharp contrast to many of his previous roles. In the comedy Anger Management, he plays an aggressive therapist alongside Adam Sandler. His most recent film is the 2003 Something's Gotta Give.
 
Nicholson is also a well-known and highly visible fan of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers; he has courtside seats, and attends whenever his schedule allows. When he is at a televised Lakers game, he is invariably sought out for celebrity camera shots during one or more breaks in the game.
 
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Jack's For Hillary, Rest of Hollywood's For Obama, Tilley Tattered

Jack Nicholson's got a thing for Hilary. And he's expressing it by using clips from the many movies he's made over his career.
Published: Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:12:00 GMT - Source: Adrants.Com - Read the article

Entertainment

Bucket List tops US movie chart

Comedy The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, heads the US and Canada box office.
Published: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:50:02 GMT - Source: News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Read the article

Issues

Matthews and others on NBC networks have repeatedly linked Clinton to fictional Nurse Ratched

During the December 4 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY): "So does her attack on him [Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)] for having had ambition as a teeny-bopper -- not a teeny-bopper, a kindergartner, does she look like Nurse Ratched here?" This is not the first time Matthews has referenced Nurse Mildred Ratched, a character in Ken Kesey's novel and in the movie based on the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, when discussing Clinton. In fact, a Media Matters for America Nexis search found that hosts, including Matthews, and guests of programs on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC have a long history of associating Clinton with Kesey's fictional character, whom Cliff's Notes describes as a "scheming, manipulative agent" who "asserts arbitrary control simply because she can." Indeed, during the August 9 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson said, "I think we have a picture, actually, of Hillary Clinton in a nursing outfit we're going to put up on the screen in a second." MSNBC then aired a screen shot of actress Louise Fletcher portraying Ratched in the 1975 film adaptation of the novel. Carlson went on to say, "I'm sorry. That's Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I'm sorry. It must have gotten confused in the files." From the August 9 edition of MSNBC's Tucker: Media Matters also found the following comparisons of Clinton to Ratched on programs on the NBC networks: During the February 20, 2005, edition of Hardball, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker said of Clinton, "It's Nurse Ratched. How about that? Nurse Ratched." Matthews responded, "Nurse Ratched is a great one, the one in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Parker continued, "She smiles while she's basically twisting the knife, and I think people feel that from Hillary Clinton, whether or not justified. That's what they perceive." The October 11, 2000, edition of NBC's Today and the October 13, 2000, edition of MSNBC's Hardball broadcast an interview with NBC's Lisa Myers during which nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh said, "I don't see it. I just -- I see Nurse Ratched. I -- when I see Hillary, I feel like I'm in the insane asylum of a hospital, and she's the nurse. And I think that's where she wants me." After Myers responded, "She probably does, given some -- given some of the things you've said about her. It would be understandable," Limbaugh asserted, "No, but that's -- I think she's -- about everybody, Lisa. I think, for the most part, that's how she views people." On the August 3, 1999, edition of Hardball, Matthews asserted, "[Hillary Clinton is] now saying, 'I kept this emotional basket case going all these years, because I'm a good Nurse Ratched, and this is a cuckoo's nest at the White House. But now I'm ready to be off on my own, so elect me as the nurse.'" On the August 2, 1999, edition of Hardball, Matthews asked The New York Observer's Tish Durkin, "[D]o you want to be so disciplined as to propose yourself as the new Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Does [Clinton] really want to play herself as this tough nurse that looked out for this guy who has psychological problems like -- like the Jack Nicholson gu -- character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Nurse Ratched, 'I'm a nurse. I stuck with him because he needed therapy.' " Later, in an interview with Gennifer Flowers on the same episode of Hardball, Matthews asserted, "[N]ow it seems like she's offering herself in a new role, as a kind of a person who's had a therapeutic role in life. Sh -- her job is to take care of a -- a delinquent, someone with psychological problems that she's had to fix or deal with or accept or maintain, or whatever you will, not as particularly a political partner, which was a role she offered up before. You know, for -- you get two for the price of one. Now you get a nurse for the price of the patient, all right? What do you think about her offering herself as Nurse Ratched to -- to the cuckoo's nest here?" Moreover, references to Nurse Ratched in the context of Hillary Clinton predate the August 3, 1999, edition of MSNBC's Hardball and extend beyond NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC. A June 1, 2000, New York Times editorial observer column by Eleanor Randolph noted "the concentrated effort by so many speakers to depict the first lady as an invading Nurse Ratched": For the moment, though, Republicans seem united in celebrating a candidate who is not only the anti-Hillary but also the non-Rudy. The G.O.P. leadership is betting that as a candidate who lacks the polarizing features of both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Lazio can command broad if bland swatches of the middle ground. Hence the concentrated effort by so many speakers to depict the first lady as an invading Nurse Ratched. That may work, but a campaign to make Ms. Clinton into a fearsome outsider could also turn Rick Lazio into Ricky Nelson. In such a match, some of those swing voters might wind up going for the more forceful character after all. Media Matters searched the Nexis news database for instances in which "Nurse Ratched" or "Nurse Ratchet" appeared within 250 words of "Clinton." Media Matters then analyzed each of the 125 news articles, columns, and transcripts to determine whether the writer or speaker brought up Nurse Ratched in talking about Clinton: The first reference to Nurse Ratched in the Nexis database in the context of Clinton appears to have been a July 19, 1994, column by Peter Ruehl that appeared in the Queensland, Australia, Courier-Mail, and the Adelaide, Australia, Advertiser that asserted, "These flight attendants are polite -- to a point -- but if anything strange goes on, they can turn into a combination Nurse Ratched and Hillary Clinton." In an August 31, 1998, "Inside the Beltway" column in The Washington Times, John McCaslin described a hypothetical movie depicting the President Bill Clinton's administration: "Hillary will be played by that actress in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' -- Remember Nurse Ratched?" In an October 11, 1998, Newark, New Jersey, Star-Ledger column, Paul Mulshine wrote, "There's a certain gaze Hillary affects when she's up there firing up all those tender-minded people who seek her leadership. And just the other day it finally occurred to me why that look scares me so much. I ran to the photo archives of The Star-Ledger to check out my theory. Sure enough: Hillary Clinton is a dead ringer for Nurse Ratched in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Mulshine further noted that "America has a lot of people who have roughly the same mentality as the bulk of Nurse Ratched's patients. They just want to be taken care of." He later wrote, "These people look to Hillary for leadership. She obliged them by putting her philosophy into a book, It Takes a Village. Her vision of America -- a nice, clean and safe place in which all the little people do their little tasks under the watchful eye of a loving and caring authority -- would also cover Nurse Ratched's mental ward. You'd have to be crazy to enter either one." In a September 25, 2000, New York Post column (subscription required), John Podhoretz wrote, "This is the worst, least inspiring, least interesting, most frustrating political season since the advent of the Great Depression, and for once, it's not entirely fair to blame the candidates for it. They deserve plenty of blame for all sorts of things, no question -- Gore's difficulties with the truth, Bush's difficulties with English, Hillary's difficulties in sounding exactly like Nurse Ratchet, Lazio's difficulties with not saying every 32 seconds that he's a New Yorker." During the August 25, 2005, broadcast of his radio program, as Media Matters documented, Limbaugh said of Clinton, "[M]y favorite name for her is Nurse Ratched." On the May 25, 2006, edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, radio host Roe Conn said of Clinton, "She has the clinical instincts of Nurse Ratched, I think. Not a chance she'll ever become president." In an August 28, 2007, American Spectator online column, David Hogberg wrote of Clinton, "The American people will not elect Nurse Ratched to the Oval Office." From the December 4 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews: MATTHEWS: Well, he wasn't born a politician, I'm amazed. Because that is exactly what Jack Kennedy used to do. He'd report -- he would repeat Nixon's attacks on him and just do it with a little wry smile. And there he is, "I understand she's quoting my kindergarten teacher from Indonesia." JAMAL SIMMONS (Democratic strategist): Well it was perfect pitch. And you could see for one second he had a little tick-tock, like, "Do I really want to talk about this? No, I don't. This is good enough." MATTHEWS: But then he did. He quoted her back to her, which was the best shot. So does her attack on him for having had ambition as a teeny-bopper -- not a teeny-bopper, a kindergartner, does she look like Nurse Ratched here?
Published: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:11:40 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the article

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Peter Fonda	Dennis Hopper	Stanley Kubrick	Adam Sandler