Birth Name: John Joseph Nicholson Also Known As: Mulholland Man Height: 5' 9" (1.75 m) Born On: 22 April 1937 Place of Birth: Neptune, New Jersey, USA   John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is a highly successful, iconic American method actor known for his often dark-themed portrayals of neurotic characters.

He has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times (winning 3 of them), more than any other male actor, and second only to Meryl Streep (who has 13 nominations and 2 wins) in total nominations. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most wins by a male actor, and second to Katharine Hepburn for most acting wins overall (Hepburn had 4).

He has also won seven Golden Globe Awards and he received a Kennedy Center Honors in 2001.

Nicholson was born at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City to June Frances Nicholson (alias June Nilson), a showgirl of English and Irish descent who had previously married an Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) six months earlier in Elkton, Maryland, on October 16, 1936. Elkton was a town known for its "quickie" marriages. However, Furcillo was already married, and, although he offered to take care of the child, June's mother Ethel insisted that she bring up the baby, partly so that June could pursue her dancing career.

Jack was brought up believing his grandparents Joseph (a department store window dresser in Asbury Park, New Jersey) and Ethel May Nicholson (a hairdresser and beautician and amateur artist in Neptune, New Jersey) were his parents. He attended high school at nearby Manasquan High School, where a drama award was ultimately named in his honor. Nicholson only discovered that his parents were actually his grandparents and his sister was in fact his mother in 1974 after being informed by a Time Magazine journalist who was doing a feature on him, while he was filming The Fortune with Stockard Channing.

Nicholson started his career as an actor, writer, and producer, working for and with Roger Corman. This included his screen debut in The Cry Baby Killer (1958), where he played a juvenile delinquent who panics after shooting two other teenagers, The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), in which he had a small role as a masochistic dental patient, and roles in two other Roger Corman films The Raven (1963) and The Terror (1963), co-starring then-wife Sandra Knight.

His work on the LSD-fueled screenplay for 1967's The Trip, which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, led to his first big break in Easy Rider (1969). Nicholson played hard-drinking lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination.

A Best Actor nomination came the following year for his persona-defining role in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which includes his famous chicken salad dialogue about getting what you want. Also that year, he appeared in the movie adaptation of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever as Daisy Gamble (Barbra Streisand)'s stepbrother.

More of his earlier and notable film roles include Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973) and the classic Roman Polanski noir thriller, Chinatown (1974). Nicholson was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for both films.

In About Schmidt (2002), Nicholson portrayed a retired Omaha, Nebraska insurance man who questions his own life and the death of his wife shortly afterward. The deeply emotional, slow film stands in sharp contrast to many of his previous roles.

In the comedy Anger Management, he plays an aggressive therapist assigned to help overly pacifist Adam Sandler.

His most recent film is the 2003 Something's Gotta Give as an aging playboy who falls for the mother (Diane Keaton) of his young girlfriend.

In late 2006, Nicholson will return to villainous form as a tough Boston Irish Mob boss presiding over Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's The Departed.

Nicholson recently started filming his next film, Rob Reiner's The Bucket List, also starring Morgan Freeman. The film is tentatively scheduled to be released in 2007.