Jack Nicholson has disappeared from Hollywood after what was an anticlimactic end to one of the greatest film careers of all time with 2010's How Do You Know? The film saw Nicholson as the head of a large firm that Paul Rudd's George works for. If that doesn't sound like the best use of a screen legend, it wasn't. "How do you know?" ended up being a star-studded box office flopwith reviewers chastising writer/director James L. Brooks for wasting such an impressive talent.

"How do you know?" It starred Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson, but surely the biggest waste was Nicholson himself, especially considering he ended his venerable screen career with this film. Up to this point, Nicholson didn't need to do anything. In fact, he didn't need to do anything after signing with Warner Bros. to star as the Joker in 1989's Batman and made somewhere in the region of $50 million. But despite his bad reputation, Nicholson wasn't just in Hollywood for the money or, indeed, the fame.

The actor impressed them The New York TimesRon Rosenbaum back in 1986 with his depth of knowledge and sincere dedication to his craft. The writer noted how, in his early days, Nicholson would go "from acting teacher to acting teacher seeking truth," and that thirst for understanding never seemed to really leave him. She also developed in him a technique to really get to the heart of his characters. Namely, Nicholson would identify a single "secret" that unlocked his role, and he did so for every single part he ever played.

Stanley Kubrick, who directed it Jack Nicholson said in 1980's The Shining that his star brought an "unapplicable" quality to his profession.. That quality was intelligence. All the while Nicholson cultivated this edgy public persona, he remained deeply observant—something Ron Rosenbaum noted when he spoke with the star in '86, writing about how during his early career the actor "sat down to coffee at Los Angeles. Kući spends hours discussing Stanislav's metaphysics with similarly inclined cinema theorists."

As Nicholson's career took off in the wake of his breakthrough role in 1969's Easy Rider, he applied that thoughtfulness to his roles, with Rosenbaum explaining how the actor was always "looking for some 'secret' to the role, some inner emotional dynamic . , a prop, a piece of business, that captures the essence of his character's nature." Nicholson explained how he came up with a 'secret' for each part, but was initially tight-lipped when asked to reveal his 'secret' for his role as the Devil himself in The Witches of Eastwick, saying: 'I'm going to feel Revealed... That's a very primal thing they taught me - you never reveal these secrets, certainly not before you do, because you'll feel exposed."

Luckily for us, Nicholson then proceeded to do exactly what he says he was taught never to do and revealed a few of his "secrets." For his lead performance in 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for example, he claimed the secret was "not in the book," adding:

“My secret design for it was that this man is a con man who knows he is irresistible to women, when in reality he expects Nurse Ratched to be seduced by him. This is its tragic flaw. This is why he ultimately fails. Louise (Fletcher, co-star and Nurse Ratched actor). 'I only talked about this with her happening with that character – it was a long, failed seduction that the guy was so pathologically confident about.'

This wasn't Nicholson's only secret that had to do with sleeping with someone.

Further explaining his process of using "secrets" to motivate his performances, Jack Nicholson used Chinatown, in which he plays private investigator JJ Gitts, as an example. This time, however, the secret was related to his off-screen scandals.

"There was a kind of triangular situation outside the scene," said the actor. "I just started going out with John Huston's daughter, which the world may not have been aware of, but it was actually able to feed the moment-to-moment reality of my scene with him." Nicholson described Huston as a surrogate father, so perhaps sleeping with his daughter Anjelica Huston really allowed him to break such an intense relationship with his co-star - although it seems to be less of a secret about his performance. and more than Jack living up to his public reputation. Nicholson also slapped Faye Dunaway for real (with her permission) in Kinnaun. which will always help sell the performance and seems like a pretty effective "secret" in itself.

Elsewhere, the actor revealed he used his father's sunglasses for his role as George Hanson in Easy Rider, with Nicholson saying: "It's not necessarily for the result, it's for what it does for you." .

He also spoke about the climactic scene in the 1981 historical drama Reds, which required him to dedicate a song to his co-star Diane Keaton. The star revealed that he actually gifted Keaton with an actual poem. "That song I gave to Miss Keaton," he said. "I wrote a real song that was extremely revealing (...) It's something that no one else sees, but you know it's there. And believe me, I did not misplace that prop.

What was Nicholson's "secret" to the role of CEO in How Do You Know? I guess that's something we'll never know, since the man has completely disappeared from the industry (though he entered a Lakers game in 2023). But it would be interesting to learn if he was still using this technique by that point - although it really seems that no "secret" could have saved that particular film.