Jack Nicholson

American actor and recognized major star after a number of years of playing lesser roles. He is known for cynical, sadistic roles and for being smug and sexist to the core. Nicholson is also supremely talented, uncommonly insightful, and totally absorbing on-screen. He was worth more than $150 million by age 59 and was able, at that time, to choose projects according to his whim. With the charisma of star-personality, he has been nominated for the Oscar ten times and won as Best Actor for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in 1975 and "As Good As It Gets" in 1998. He was also voted the Best Supporting Actor for "Terms of Endearment." His films include "Easy Rider," "Carnal Knowledge," "Chinatown" and "A Few Good Men."

Nicholson had a murky genealogy; the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother, 17 years old and a showgirl with the renowned Earl Carroll Dancers who had a love affair with an older man, 27-year-old Don Furcillo, (b. on 13 May 1936.) When June became pregnant, her mother claimed that the child was her own with her husband John. The pact was made of a conspiracy of silence. It was not until Jack Nicholson was 37 years of age, the year 1974, that he learned that his sister June was his mother. She was gone by then, having died of cancer in 1963 at age 44. His birth father also died of cancer in 1997.

From the beginning, the adorable little boy was surrounded by women and the adoration of women -- his mother Mud, his older sisters, June, 18 years his senior and Lorraine, older by 16, grandmother Ella, and, of course, the beauty parlor contingent, the cacophony of women in and out of the house. He chanced upon film at age 17 during a trip to California. Starting out as an office boy at MGM's cartoon department, he studied acting for stage roles and in TV soap operas. In 1958 he made a debut in a Roger Corman quickie, "The Cry Baby Killer," followed by a series of Corman vehicles for sex and violence, horror and action.