Method To The Madness
If any celebrity could be described as being a true connoisseur, it would be Jack Nicholson. Never showy, he’s known for having a penchant for modest homes and taking only enough to be comfortable – despite
The riches that he has gained from being at the top of the film game for over 60 years. He’s also a known fan of art, design and literature, and while he doesn’t drink, he’s something of a gastronomy pro, as well.
It appears that Nicholson enjoys taking a considered approach to life and luxury. The things that are worth enjoying are worth taking the time to ponder. You can see such an approach with Nicholson’s acting career, too; he’s never been typecast, and has played such a varied number of characters that it’s difficult to even pin down what
Sort of performer he really is. Again, the word ‘considered’ comes to mind—all of Nicholson’s performances have something to them, whether he’s playing the Joker in batman, or an obsessive-compulsive novelist in as Good as It Gets.
Either way, it would be fair to say that Nicholson isn’t much like the other hot names in Hollywood—he does things his own way, and he has reaped the rewards (he’s one of only three male actors to win three academy awards). And in 1994, he became one of the youngest actors ever to be given the American film Institute’s lifetime achievement award.
This determination to do things on his own terms has lead Nicholson to other interests that don’t normally fit into the mainstream. And one of his major interests is cigars. Indeed, Nicholson is one of the world’s best- known cigar smokers. At the end of 1999, he was in the top 10 of a list of the 20th century’s 100 greatest cigar smokers. And he’s always been very upfront about what he likes and doesn’t like on the cigar front.
Nicholson actually began his cigar-smoking career when he was filming the last detail in 1973. He’d wanted the character to be a cigar smoker, and because he was filming in Canada, he had access to Cubans. That love for Cuban sticks stayed with him for the rest of his life, and he’s stated on the record numerous times that there’s a quality to Cuban cigars that you just don’t find with brands from other countries—they could almost be an analogy for Nicholson’s approach to his own work.
After he finished filming the last detail, Nicholson reverted back to an old, previously kicked habit of smoking cigarettes. However, after taking up golf, he realized that, due to nervousness, he was smoking too many. Cigars became the answer to the problem, and he became a proper connoisseur.
Always opting for Cuban sticks when possible, Nicholson even perfected a method of lighting a cigar taught to him by director roman Polanski. The idea is that, to get the best flavour, you need to run the flame around the edge of the cigar tip, wait for it to catch fire, blow it out, and then draw as normal. Nicholson has stuck with that method ever since he first adopted it.
It’s an odd way to get a simple job done, but then again, Nicholson’s performances have often been known to come across as odd—even slightly unsettling. When you see the finished films, though, you know that there must be something to the way he does things.