Jack's Life

"Volatile Jack Nicholson has found the perfect biographer in Patrick McGilligan, who gives us a rich, absorbing portrait of one of the greatest movie stars ever." —Patricia Bosworth

No male American film star of the post-Brando era has demonstrated the talent, the charisma, the larger-than-life audacity, and the string of screen triumphs of Jack Nicholson. In Jack's Life Patrick McGilligan, one of our finest film historians, has produced the definitive biography of this most private and public of stars, from his tangled Dickensian upbringing in New Jersey, his formative years as an actor and screenwriter, his near-accidental breakthrough to stardom in Easy Rider, and his string of great roles in Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Last Detail, The Shining, and other films that mark him as a searching, complex artist. Here as well is the often Rabelaisian life behind the smiling mask, the legendary romances and appetites for sex and drugs, the obsessions with money and control, and the perpetual restlessness.

"Long-awaited, first-class, admiring but unauthorized—the thoughtful Nicholson rasp adds vividness to every page." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Patrick McGilligan is also the biographer of George Cukor, James Cagney, Robert Altman, and Fritz Lang. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1995 / paperback / ISBN 0-393-31378-6 / Photographs / 512 pages / BIOGRAPHY

• "Entertaining and illuminating." —New York Times Book Review
• "Detailed and engrossing . . . a diligent study of an artist in process." —Washington Post Book World