(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros.)
Jack Nicholson cemented himself as somewhat of a counterculture icon when he emerged in the film industry, working with indie legends like Roger Corman and writing a few screenplays himself, such as the psychedelic work The Trip. However, it was his role in Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider that allowed him to earn greater acclaim; he even received an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role as George.
From here on out, Nicholson appeared in many classic movies from the New Hollywood era, like Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, Chinatown, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but one of his most recognisable performances came in 1980 with The Shining. It was only a matter of time before legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick teamed up with Nicholson for a movie, but many viewers were perhaps shocked to discover that the pair would be making a horror movie together.
While Nicholson had cut his teeth in various low-budget horror movies in the late 1950s and 1960s, Kubrick had never made an outright horror flick before, but the filmmaker proved to be a master at any genre he tackled, thus making one of the most popular scary movies of all time. The Shining saw Nicholson play Jack, a troubled writer who moves with his wife and son into the Overlook Hotel as a caretaker. Here, he meets various ghostly guests and loses his grip on reality, turning into a cold-blooded psychopath.
The movie is rather infamous for its intense behind-the-scenes goings-on, which involved Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy, facing emotional trauma from the way that Kubrick treated her. He forced her to do long and repetitive takes of emotionally gruelling scenes, leaving her in tears every day. Duvall told The Hollywood Reporter, “You just think about something very sad in your life or how much you miss your family or friends. But after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’ And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry.”
Kubrick reportedly treated Nicholson rather differently when compared to Duvall, although he did make the actor eat cheese sandwiches every day, knowing that he hated them, hoping to provoke a sense of annoyance to aid his portrayal of the terrifying Jack Torrance. While the pair did get on while filming, there was a moment when Nicholson provoked Kubrick’s darker side.
In an interview with The Guardian, Bob Tanswell, who worked as an electrician on the set of the film, revealed an incident in which he saw Kubrick lose his patience with Nicholson. “I’d heard of Stanley Kubrick but didn’t realise how special he was. He’d do 150 takes of a simple scene,” Tanswell explained. “One time, Jack said he had done his back in and needed a few days off. That’s a lot of time when you’re shooting a big film, but Stanley said, ‘OK.’”
With the perfectionistic Kubrick agreeing to give Nicholson a few days of rest, he hoped that the actor would be doing just that, but he soon found out that the actor was spending his time doing something different. Adding, “The next day, we were in the sparks room watching Wimbledon when Stanley walks in. He asks what we’re up to, and as he turns to look at the telly, there he is: Jack Nicholson sat in the crowd with a girl on either side. Stanley went mad.”
Perhaps Nicholson needed some time away from Kubrick’s intense working methods, although he wasn’t smart enough to realise he’d be captured on camera.
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