1. Michael Landon,  I Was A Teenage Werewolf, 1957.  "Jack was the wrong type," said producer Herman Cohen.  Like: neither teen nor werewolf?   He waited 37 years and then did his own lycanthropian thing, Wolf, in 1993. With director Mike Nichols, no less - based on Jim Harison’s novel, in 1993. Jack called himself a hick actor. With tow mottos. For life: More good  times. For work: Everything counts.   So let’s start counting…
2. Tom Arnold, The Stupids, 1965.    Who’d want to be Stanley Stupid? With John Landis directing! Nicholson and Tim fled what the San Francisco Chronicle  voted “the most moronic, easy-to-trash movie we'll see all year.”  Sole interest was watching Landis’ director chums making asses of themselves:  Gurinder Chadha, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Mick Garris, Norman Jewison, Robert Wise and two great political film-makers: Costa-Gavras and Gillo Pontecorvo.
3. Gene Hackman, Bonnie and Clyde, 1966.
4. Bruce Dern, St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 1966.   Director Roger Corman considered Jack and Dernsie for the gangster, Johnny May. Nicholson asked instead  for the smallest part - with the longest run in the film. As the killers’ driver, he worked three weeks. “I earned more money in a Corman movie than ever before [triple the actors' weekly scale of $375].  Only had only one line -  only laugh in the picture, I might  add.  Someone says, ‘What  the hell  are you  doing?’  to one of the killers, who’'s rubbing garlic on his bullets.  And I say, using a gravelly voice:  ‘It's garlic.  The bullets don't kill ya, ya die of the blood poisoning'.”
5. Bruce Dern, The Trip, 1967.     Jack wrote Peter Fonda’s  guide for himself, then lost a second role when  Roger Corman had more faith in Jack as a writer. (His 1959 acting income came to: $1,900). His original script, said Dern, “was just sensational.” No hard feelings. When Nicholson called him for King of Marvin Gardens, Jack said: “Our kingdom has come, Dernsie.” Jack's certainly had.  Dernsie's got lost in ensuing shuffles.
   
6. Dustin Hoffman,  The Graduate, 1967.   
   
7. John Cassavetes, Rosemary's Baby, 1968.     Laurence Harvey ached for it.  But director Roman Polanski wanted an actor who looked an actor - and even TV-commercialish all-American. Hearing that description, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford backed off.  Among those auditioning was "a complete unknown who'd played in some eminently forgettable horror films.  For all his exceptional talents, his faintly rakish and sinister appearance disqualified him for the role of an upstanding, clean-cut, conventionally handsome young actor." Polanski was discussing... not John, but Jack! 
8. Franco Nero, Un tranquillo posto di campagna (UK: A Quiet Place in the Country), Italy-France, 1968.    Maestro Elio Petri wanted Jack - didn’t  everyone! - and settled for Nero as the burnt out  painter (very Jack!) in what Petri called an   “experimental” psychological horror movie. Nero suggested co-starring with his lover, “la Signorina Redgrave.” (The second of  four films with Vanessa). Nicholson was already pally with  Bertolucci at this point  and was working, six years later,  with Antonioni. , Petri had met Jack and his  early work (Ride The Whirlwind, The Shooting) on the ‘60s Euro festival circuit. Jack, however,  was too busy - giving Head to The Monkees, and replacing Rip Torn in somethng called Easy Rider.
9. Michael Burns, That Cold Day in the Park, 1968.   Maverick director Robert Altman talking… “I’ll tell you who I turnjed down for that part. Jack Nicholson!   Jack wanted it - he came to my office and we talked about it. And I said: Jack, I think you’re too old for it.”   Jack was 31, Burns just 21. No matter, the Easy Rider bikes were parked around the next corner.
10. Warren Oates, Two Lane Blacktop, 1970.   Monte Hellman had directed Nicholson five times, (including his two 1965 existential Westerns, The Shooting and Ride The Whirlwind),  so  it was obvious he’d give Jack a call about his (existential) drag-race  movie (first one to reach New York wins  the rival’s car).   The stars were  two singers, "Sweet Baby" James Taylor and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. So a real actor was required or, as what Chicago critic Roger Ebert phrased it, "the only character who is fully occupied with being himself (rather than the instrument of a metaphor), and so we get the sense we've met somebody.” In that sense, not unlike Jack’s breakthrough as George Hanson in Easy Rider, 1968.  
    
    
11. Dennis Hopper, The Last Movie, 1971.  
    "We had some conversations about it, but Dennis wanted to play the part himself." Based on Hopper’s experiences while shooting The Sons of Katie Elder in Mexico (when indigenous natives re-enacted the movie-making), the film won the Critics’ Prize at Venice but The Last Movie was damn nearly The Last Hopper. Well, he shot it in  Peru - coke capital of the world!  He’d got Stewart Stern, a pal since scriptingRebel Without A Cause, to write it. They argued, split, but always wanted to work together again. ”He fascinated me,” said Stern, “because he had ideas before anybopdy else did.” But their stoned, 98 page treatment interested no one. Anfd Hopper rerused to risk record producer Phil Spector’s offer of $1.2m to film  the new, 119-page script.  Hopper just bided his time… He always intended Kansas, his “stunt man in a lousy Western,” for Montgomery Clift - but he died in 1966. The role needed an older player. Finally, at 34, Hopper explained: “It was easier doing it myself than explain to another actor what I wanted.”  He had tested various hopefuls and considered two of John Ford’s family: John Wayne and Ben Johnson, plus  Jason Robards and… Willie Nelson!! My God, Dennis and Willie shooting in Peru… they’d still be there!   Buried, probably.
    
    
12. Dustin Hoffman, Straw Dogs, 1971.   A (bad) Sam Peckinpah Western set in  a Cornwall, almost entirely inhabited by (violent) village  idiots. In  the mix for the (milque-toast) hero were Nicholson, Beau Bridges, Elliott Gould (booked by Ingmar Bergman for The Touch), Stacy Keach, Sidney Poitier and Donald Sutherland. They probably all agreed with Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert’s later review: “The most offensive thing about the movie is its hypocrisy; it is totally committed to the pornography of violence, but lays on the moral outrage with a shovel.”
13. Robert Fields, The Sporting Club, 1971.   Director Larry Peerce tried hard to interest Jack in this close-up on power, corruption and hypocrisy in   a rich man's paradise. The novel was by Thomas McGuane, who wrote Jack’s Missouri Breaks, 1976, and Peerce had directed Goodbye, Columbus, 1969, making a star of Ali McGraw, future wife of Jack Pack-er, producer Robert Evans.
14. Jon Voight, Deliverance, 1971.   LA Times columnist Joyce Haber had the scoop.  But not the proviso. Jack agreed to be Ed but nsisted on his neighbour and idol, Marlon Brando, for the other role. “He said he despised acting,” said director John Boorman. “Acting was nothing more than mimicry - a bunch of tricks.”  Even so, Brando  agreed: “I’ll take whatever you pay Jack.”  Great! Except Jack’s agent Sandy Bresler wanted what Warner was paying Redford for Jeremiah Johnson - $500,000.  That meant Brando and Nicholson would soak up half the budget!   (And they guaranteed  nothing. They were  rubbish in The Missouri Breaks, 1975). After musing on Warren Beatty, Lee Marvin,  James Stewart, the Warner suits told UK director John Boorman: “Make it with nobodies for no money.”  Hi... is that Jon Voight? 
15. Al Pacino, The Godfather, 1971.
16. Jason Miller, The Exorcist, 1972.
17. Ryan O’Neal, Paper  Moon, 1972.    Before director Peter Bogdanovich rolled O’Neal pere et fille, in black-and-white, the iconic John Huston had prepped it as Addie Pray (the book’s title) in colour for Newman pere et fille, Nell Potts. Paramount chief Robert Evans had wanted Nicholson or Warren Beatty. Except neither one had a kid (of the right age).  O’Neal said he wouldn't have made the film without Tatum. “No father and daughter can connect with the intensity of a movie, and in a way, the story is a parallel of our lives.”  Oh really? In her autobiography, Paper Life, O’Neal said when she was Oscar-nominated and Pop wasn’t, he hit her! Ten at the time, Tatum remains the youngest Oscar-winner.
18. Bruce Dern, King of Marvin Gardens, 1972.    Director Bob Rafelson switched his Staebler siblings - making  Nicholson the introvert dee-jay and turning Dernsie into a riff on Jack as the expansive, older bro.  "This is what you try to do as an artisrt. Clear the ground for the subconscious. Hope that it starts flowing and influencing the work. … Always reaching out, trying something you haven’t done before.” And yet he later confided:  "I’m at least 75% of any character I play… I will draw on my experiences with women in every rôle. I play.  My own experience with women? Pretty good,  so far.” Despite suffering ejaculatio praecox until around 26).
19. George C Scott, The Day of the Dolphin, 1972.   One of the cast, Jon Korkes,  said Scott – as a marine biologiost teaching dolphins to spea k- “was a troubled guy. A brilliant actor, but a tortured alcoholic who was three or four different people, depending  on the day.”  Directed by the great Mike  Nichols - to get out of his contract with his Graduate co-producer Joseph E Levine - after Roman Polanski quit following the murder of his wife (and friends)  by the Manson gang.  Jack had been set as the biologist  Jake Terrell.
20. Edward Fox, Day of the Jackal, 1973.  Discussed  it with gentleman  director Fred Zinnemann in London. However,  Fred preferred a more anonymous actor, got his way and that,  as he would freely confess,  seriously undermined  the film’s box-office.
    
    
21. Robert Redford, The Sting, 1973.   "I passed up Michael in The Godfather and I passed up The Sting. Even though I am a non-mercenary artist, I had a pretty good idea of the commercial worth of those properties. But, creatively, they were not worth my time." But  Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky  was - in  The Last Detail, sitting upon a Columbia shelf until society caught  up  his and Robert Towne’s "bad language." Result: Best Actor at Cannes and the UK Oscar. "But not getting the Academy Award hurt real bad.  That was my best role.  How often does one like that come along,  one that fits you?"  Oh, at least twice more...
    
22. Ryan O'Neal, Paper Moon, 1973.   Director Peter Bogdanovich always cast what he saw as versions of himself - except he was never Jack-cool. Paramount production chief Robert Evans suggested Jack (or Warren Beatty) when trying to nix O'Neal... who had been sleeping with Mrs Evans, Ali MacGraw.
    
    
23. Robert Redford, The Great Gatsby, 1973.
    Redford was the third Gatz after Warner Baxter, 1926, and Alan Ladd, 1948. Leonardo DiCaprio was the fourth in 2011 and Brit star Toby Stephens was sixth  in a 2000 Granada UK TV  production. Said Jack:  “The only really good role I’ve rejected - and I could kill myself - was Jay Gatsby... Since I was 18, people   said     I should do Gatsby. I didn’t really go after the part for well, personal reasons I don’t want printed.”  Jack also said: ”I don’t make movies - I make classics.”  And UK director Jack Clayton’s take was no classic. 
    
    
24. Bo Svenson, The Great Waldo Pepper, 1973.  Nicholson, George Segal and Sam Waterston were possibles for Axel Olsson, Robert Redfford’s post WWi barnstorming stunt pilot rival. The Butch & Sundance director George Roy Hill chose 1920 faces over acting experience.  “Which may have been a huge mistake.”  Robert Redford did his own flying circus wing-walking. Not Svenson. Not even when Hill threatened to fire him. Redford sensed failure in the air.  Well, of course. No Newman!
25. Paul Newman, The Towering Inferno, 1974.     Suggested by Steve McQueen as someone strong enough to hold his own against him.
26. Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver, 1975.  
27. Bruce Dern, Family Plot, 1975.      Because of a little something called One Flew Overt The Cuckoo’s Nest, Jac k had to miss what proved Alfred Hitchcock’s last hurrah.  Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s agents apparently asked for too much money. “Hitch doesn't pay a million dollars,” said Hitch. Hitch had first (and oddly) paired Nicholson with... Liza Minnelli. Jack suggested his pal, Dernsie.Hitch was prepping The Short Night when he died, at age 80,  on April 29, 1980.
28. Michael Lonsdale, India Song, France, 1975.    French cinematographer Bruno Nuytten said Jack was approached by novelist Marguerite Duras to take the lead in this version of her book, The Vice-Consul..  
29. Paul Newman, Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, 1976.    Once again, the friends and neighbours , Brando and Nicholspon, were in the frame for the same role - William F. Buffalo Bill" Cody.  - "the first totally manufactured American hero ,:” said revered director Robert Altman, “ and that's why we need a movie star." They both passed on what the credits unashamedly called “Robert Altman’s Absoloutely Unique and Heroic Enterprise of Inimitable Lustre." (Nary a critic agreed!)  Instead, they made their own Western, The Missouri Breaks,   No better. Or, in fact, even worse.
    
30. Robert De Niro, The Last Tycoon, 1976.
    Each director saw the titular Monroe Stahr differently:  Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Al Pacino.  Jack’s willingness to play Stahr persuaded Paramount to agree a budget for director Mike Nichols. But when Elia Kazan made the film, Jack simply wanted to experience  Sam Spiegel (producer of his career’s major  influence, Lawrence of Arabia) and spurned the lead  for a  “short part” - an East Coast labour leader out to unionise 30s’ Hollywood. Jack asked for   $150,000 and some action.  Instead of paying him his cut, producer Sam Spiegel offered  something from his  art collection. Jack’s manager, Sandy Bressler said he didn’t want any painting, “but… a complete accounting of the gross for the movie… not a guestimate…”    “Jack won’t sue me,” said Sam Spiegel.   But he did! 
    
    
31. Harrison Ford , Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, 1976.
32. David Carradine, Bound For Glory, 1976.    Hal Ashby’s first  cholce - singer Tim Buckley ODed. So Ashby sent  for his star of his abrasive Last Detail  but Jack didn’t see himself as Woody Guthrie and suggested his true idol - Bob Dylan. Nicholson was more keen on  another  film that Ashby was being pushed to make - a book that Nicholson had tried to option at age 26 in 1963. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
33. Donald Sutherland,  Casanova, 1976.    In one year he'd passed on Buffalo Bill, Monroe Stahr, Woody Guthrie and now Giacomo... As per usual, maestro Federico Fellini played with the idea of superstars - Nicholson, Brando, Caine, Pacino, even Redford!! -  before settling for a more parochial venture with, maybe, Alberto Sordi, Gian Maria Volonte or the unknown cabaret performer Tom Deal. Ultimately, it was “Donaldino.” He had shared Paul Mazursky’s 8½, Alex in Wonderland, 1970, with Fellini in Hollywood and they met  again on the set of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 in 1975.
34. Keith Carradine, Lumière, France, 1976.    Jeanne Moreau wanted Jack for her directing debut, until "dreaming over an early Gary Cooper," she saw a Carradine film and he cancelled a recording session to make the film. He fit the bill of "a very tall, lovely young man," the opposite  of the French industry's usual "small, tiny, dark  creatures." Jeanne’s friend  ("never my  lover"), realisateur Louis Malle, then chose Carradine for Pretty Baby.
    
    
35. Dennis Hopper, Tracks, 1976.  
    Director Henry Jaglom wrote it for Jack and the spaced-out Vietnam vet escorting a coffin  home was still called Jack when Dennis played it - in  his Hollywood comeback after eight years away imbibing every illegal substance known to man, man.  Said Nicholson:  “As an actor, Dennis stands out because of his edge, his sincerity, the honesty he conveys.”  Jaglom insisted he wrote Nicholson’s famous Five Easy Pieces diner explosion - “and hold it between your knees!” -  for this film! (Based on a similar incident when Jack couldn’t order wheat toast  at the LA patisserie, Pupi’s). Carole Eastman,  who wrote Five Easy Pieces, says the opposite, of course. And, anyway, Pieces director Bob Rafelson thinks he wrote it.  “Rashomon,” said Jaglom..
    
    
36. Robert De Niro, Novocento (1900), Italy, 1976.    In need of an US star, Italian maestro Bernardo Bertolucci’s first thought for the artistocratic Alfredo Berlinghieri was his pal Jack - until seeing De Niro working with Francis Coppola on The Godfather: Part II.
37. Martin Sheen,  Apocalypse Now, 1976.
    
38. Richard Dreyfuss, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1976. For once, Spielberg felt he needed an A star: Hackman, Hoffman or McQueen.   Jack's agent, Sandy Bresler, told co-producer Julia Phillips: "He didn't want to fight the effects  but  he'd sure take points anytime. He's saying: It's a hit!" Not so worried about the Mothership, Dreyfuss agreed to $500,000 and five gross points.     
    
39.  Richard Burton, Equus, 1977.  Burton buried his rivals by going back on Broadway in the role, to prove he could still cut it. Still didn't net him an Oscar. Nothing ever did - from seven nominations.
40. Roy Scheider, Sorcerer, 1977.    For his awful mess of re-treading theFrench classic, Wages of Fear, 1953, US director William Friedkin regretted not trying to agree to Steve McQueen’s stipulations. Next choices, Clint Eastwood and Nicholson had no interest in working abroad. Or, indeed with Friedkin, who  kindly stated that Scheider was his worst casting decision. "He’s a second or third banana, not a star." Rather like Friedkin...
    
    
41. Richard Burton, The Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1976.
42. Richard Dreyfuss, The Goodbye Girl, 1977.    "The man is undirectable," said stage-screen director Mike Nichols after his notorious run-in with Robert De Niro  (far too fresh in from Taxi Driver) on the Neil Simon comedy that started out as Bogart Slept Here - eventually being respun from  Marsha Mason's angle. The Dreyfuss angle won  the  Oscar.
    
    
43. Keith Carradine, Pretty Baby, 1977.  
    The plot sickens… A prostitute allows her  12-year-old daughter’s virginity to be auctioned off in a brothel in the red-light Storyville district of New Orleans, circa 1917. French director Louis Malle saw Nicholson for the real-life photographer EJ Bellocq - and Jack’s lover, Anjelica Huston, for the mother.   If selected, they could have ruined the movie. In March that year, Huston had innocently returned home to Nicholson’s house where (unknown to her) Jack’s friend, director Roman Poalanski, had been having illegalsex with a 13-year-old girl. The three stars hit all headlines, not the kind of of publicity Paramount would have craved.  Jill-of-all-trades Polly Platt has never been able to see the film and still bristles at any mention of French realisateur Louis Malle. He was furious with her for "taking over the film" by contacting Nicholson - "a very bad choice"! - and so, she argued, Malle wrecked her script, by using Carradine as the photographer Bellocq.  "I felt like the little girl.  Bought, sold, screwed!"
    
    
44. Gene Hackman, Superman,1977
45. Anthony Hopkins, Magic, 1978.    Producer Joe Levine wanted A Star. Jack said fine, but you'll have to wait for a few months. He was Goin' South (wasn't he though!)  -  and directing again.
46. Jon Voight, Coming Home, 1978.    His Last Detail director Hal Ashby called in October 1976.  Leading lady Jane Fonda called. Nicholson  quit when true Brit director John Schlesinger left to make Yanks  in Britain, passing  the impotent Vietnam war veteran - and an Oscar - to Voight.
47. Malcolm McDowell, Caligula, 1978.
48. Jack Lemmon, The China Syndrome, 1979.    Producer Michael Douglas' original game plan: Nicholson, Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss.  "But the Kubrick thing was in the works. [The Shining].  He could still have done it but he was floating around.  I love to tease him about it now, boy!"
49. Roy Scheider, All That Jazz, 1979.      When director Bob Fosse was convinced (by his health) not to try and play his screen self, Broadway choreographer Joe Gideon, was chased and/or avoided by… Nicholson (who could play anything!), Alan Alda, Alan Bates (“too British,” said Fosse), Warren Beatty (keen, but Gideon must not die at the end!), Robert Blake, Richard Dreyfuss (“afraid of the dancing”), Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Jack Lemmon (“too old”), Paul Newman (“Dumb of me… a terrible oversight”), Al Pacino, George Segal, Jon Voight. Scheider just grabbed it. “Outrageous, assaulting, melodramatic, very funny, stupid, silly, simplistic, vulgar - a wonderful movie!” Exactly.
    
50. Paul Le Mat, Melvin and Howard, 1980.     Jack passed the scenario to his Goin' South find, Mary Steenburgen. "Here's an example of a great film script." He wuz right.  Of course.  And she won an Oscar for it -  in her third film.
    
    
51. Bill Murray, Where The Buffalo Roam, 1980.    Entire concept of the film failed without the obvious star as gonzo journalist Dr Hunter S Thompson - who then talked to Jack about  doing Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
52. Robert Redford, Brubaker, 1980.    Bob Rafelson was directing so obviously the prison (governer) drama was set for Jack. The fact the director couldn’t deliver  The Star was  among the reasons poor Rafelson  was deep-sixed by  Fox chief Alan Ladd Jr.  Journeyman helmer Stuart Rosenberg finished the ho-hum movie. Jack stuck by Bob for The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981.
    
53. Robin Williams, Popeye, 1980.     Beaten to Annie, producer Robert Evans bet on  another comic-strip.  Dustin Hoffman loved the first 50 pages of Jules Feiffer's Sweethaven saga. "He kept comparing my script to The Graduate, to Samuel Beckett, to Kafka… Of course, by the time I submitted the finished first draft, Dustin wanted me fired!" Evans refused. "He couldn't believe that I stayed with Jules rather than him. But I believed Jules was right. He'd worked on it for a year and  I didn't want to star-fuck... You don't need a star [although Evans ws being pushed in the direction of Nicholson and Al Pacino!]. Anyone can play it. For crissakes, we could use... Robin Williams!"And, alone in Hollywood, Evans had never seen Mork and Mindyon TV.  On hearing Jerry Lewis might direct, Feiffer said: "I'd rather kill myself." Robin started the Malta shoot preparing on Oscar speech and ended going: ”Oh God, when is it going to be over? If you watch it backward, it really does have an ending.”
    
54. Dudley Moore, Arthur, 1980.    The suits wanted a US star. Brand new auteur Steve Gordon wanted Dud. Gordon won, made a big hit, but never a second film - he died at 44 in 1982. John Belushi had passed, scared of being typed as a drunk (surely the least of his troubles!). Orion Pictures’ other choices for the titular rich man-child were: Jeff Bridges, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Robin Williams… and quite ridiculously, Nicholson, James Caan, Al Pacino (that would have been tough going!), Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta. Enough for an Arthur XI soccer squad - and one reserve.
    
55. Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark,  1980.
56. Harrison Ford, Blade Runner, 1981.  UK wiz Ridley Scott spent a long time sniffing out the perfect Deckard.  From top notchers Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman (the first choice was keen… on making it a totally different character, of course), Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino…  to such excellent journeymen as William Devane, Robert Duvall, Peter Falk, Frederic Forrest, Scott Glenn, Tommy Lee Jones, Raul Julia, Nick Nolte, Christopher Walken.  Martin Sheen was too exhausted after Apocalypse Now. In sheer desperation, choices lowered to Cliff Gorman, Judd Hirsch. Even the Virginian Morgan Paull stood a chance, having played Deckard in Scott’s tests of potential Rachaels. (He was given Holden for his pains). Plus Arnold Schwarzenegger, not yet seen as Conan, much less Terminator.  And for probably the last time in such an illustrious list,  the fading star of Burt Reynolds.
    

57. Klaus Kinski, Fitzcarraldo, Germany, 1981.  
    Director Werner Herzog dropped his usual star for “a figure of genuine charm, warmth and humour,” adding “that paranoid schizophrenic [Kinski] never showed a spark of humour in 170 films.” As usual, Kinski called Herzog crazy. “I am Fitzcarraldo. Do what you like - in the end, I’m still him.” And he was. After five weeks’ shooting in Peru, Jason Robards fell ill.  “Ill..? Damn nearly died!” he growled at me in Cannes.  Herzog tried to entice Nicholson (fully booked) into rescuing Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald and then SOSed “the baddest dude among actors.” Kinski replied: “Fuck you!” Two days later, he opened a bottle of champagne and signed on. As Mick Jagger had no time to re-shoot, his role was cut from the film.

58. James Cagney, Ragtime, 1981.  When Newman refused and Jack Nicholson had to quit as New York Poilce Cmmissioner Rhinelander Waldo, Czech director Milos Forman (succeeding Robery Altman) decided to drag Cagney out of retirement. “You can have any part you want - including Evelyn Nesbitt!” As to the vast age difference, Waldo was actually 32 at the time of the EL Doctorow’s novel - Cagney was 81. His doctors said rather than being detrimental at the time, a film was crucial to his health and well being… and his old pal and often co-star, Pat O’Brien,   also came out of retirement. For a joint swansong.

59. Steve Martin, Pennies From Heaven, 1981.    Among the many rejections in 1981 as he considered a more “biographical approach” to future projects - like his pet subjects: Napoleon and directing something to “put across the ideas of Wilhelm Reich.”

60. Albert Finney, Annie, 1981.     Very keen on being Daddy Warbucks.  So was Sean Connery.    When the original producer David Begelman quit  due to the scandal of him forging Cliff Robertson’s signature on a cheque, Jack kept the faith and left with him.  Although disliking the Broadway musical, new producer  Ray Stark said: ”This is the film I want on my tombstone.” Hence, Time critic Richard Corliss’ comment: ”Funeral services are being held at a theater near you.”
    
    

61. Walter Matthau, The Survivors, 1982.  “Confused and repellent,” said Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel.  Almost inevitable after such musical-chairs casting. Jack Nicholson and James Caan became Joe Bologna and Jerry Reed (he stayed aboard, but as Jack) became Walter Matthau and Robin Williams acting as if in two different movies.
    

62. Louis Gossett Jr,  An Officer and a Gentleman, 1982.    Jack was too expensive and Mandy Pantinkin “too ethnic” for Gunnery Sergeant Foley, “a Southern white guy.” In a flash of (well researched) inspiration, director Taylor Hackford made the tough sunuvabitch black  (but not ethnic?) - and Lou won the support Oscar.
    

63. Jacques Perrin, Les quarantièmes rugissants (UK: The Roaring Forties), France, 1982.    Actor-producer Perrin tried Nicholson and Jon Voight. Finally,  to keep his costs down, Perrin  played the UK yachtsman cheating on a round-the-world solo race and killing himself.
    

64. Robert De Niro, Once Upon a Time in America, 1982.  After his epic about the West, Sergio Leone planned another on the East - based on The Hoods, "an autobiographical account" of New York Jewish gangster Harry Goldberg. He wrote it in Sing Sing prison as Harry Grey. Leone thought he resembled Edward G Robinson. Harry probably agreed. He certainly used “a repertoire of cinematic citations, of gestures and words seen and heard thousands of times on the big screen…” But then, so did Leone with a 400 page script packed with echoes of Angels with Dirty Faces, Bullets or Ballots, Dead End, High Sierra, Little Cesar andWhite Heat. In October 1975, he even fancied the elderly James Cagney and Jean Gabin as the older Noodles and Max - the younger beingGérardDepardieu and Richard Dreyfuss. The maestro claimed he interviewed “over 3,000 actors,” taping 500 auditions for the 110 speaking roles. Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino passed on Noodles. In 1980, Tom Berenger and Paul Newman were up for Noodles (young andold) with either John Belushi, Dustin Hoffman, William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, John Malkovich or Jon Voight as Max, then Joe Pesci (he became Frankie, instead) and James Woods was Max. And Scott Tiler and Rusty Jacobs were the young Noodles and Max in the three hours-49 minutes unfurled at the ’84 Cannes festival… instead of Leone’s aim: two three-hour movies.
    

65. Michael Nouri, Flashdance, 1982.    Potential Nick Hurleys were: Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Costner (runner-up to Nouri), Live Aid creator Bob Geldof, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Burt Reynolds, rocker Gene Simmons, John Travolta… plus such surprises as Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci!   At 36, Nouri was double the age of the flashdancing Jennifer Beals.

66. Scott Glenn, Personal Best, 1982.   Despite  their  bitter rows during the aborted Two Jakes the year before, writer-director Robert Towne created the UCLAthlethics coach for  Jack - who politely declined.  He had no wish to rate second to Lesbian lovers. And probably didn’t go for his ex-pal Towne’s dialogue: “Who says friendship lasts forever? It wears out like everything else.  Like tyres.”
    

67. Dennis Hopper, Rumble Fish, 1983.     Iconic director Francis Coppola called him to be father of Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke.  "I felt  maybe it would be symbolically nice to play the father of this generation of actors - as wild as they are. But... I didn't like the script."  And them other Easy Rider needed to continue his Hollywood comeback...

68. Darren McGavin, A Christmas Story, 1983.     Now better known as A Christmas Classic… Nicholson loved the script and offered to be The Old Man Parker. MGM kept this news from director Bob Clark as Nicholson’s fee would have doubled the budget! (Jack would never lower his fee for anyone, not even, as he once declared, for his mom). Clark - and, apparently, Nicholson, too - said McGavin was born for the old curmudgeon. The film flopped - just like It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946 -  which Story has since overhauled as the American’ #1 favourite Yuletide movie.

69. James  Fox, Anna Pavlova, England-Russia, 1983.    British directing legend Michael Powell had his name cut bythe Kremlin from his final film - about the great Russian ballerina. It took  25 years for  Powell’s Greek-born producer Frixos Constantine, to find enough money to restore  the film  to its original glory, time (five hours) and  credits as The White Swan in 2008. Powell fan Martin Scorsese first met him  at Constantine’s  Shaftesbury Avenue office in London  and offered to appear in the film and persuaded De Niro and Nicholson to participate as Anna’s agent and  husband.  Moscow banned both for their  anti-Communist films (The Deer Hunter) or statements.
    

70. Martin Mull, Mr Mom, 1983.   “I couldn't find a film that was suitable to take my kids to,” complained producer Aaron Spellinbg,  “So we made one.” The old role reversal number. Michael Keaton is a sudden home hgusband when his wife, Teri Garr, wins a lucrative job. Her boss was chosen from Mull, Dabney Coleman, Jeffrey Jones and… Jack Nicholson!
    
71. Michael Douglas, Romancing The Stone, 1985.  Another one Douglas teases him about. With Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman and Christopher Reeve refusing, the producer decided to play the hero, Indiana… er, Jack Colton…himself.  Huge hit. The sequel, not so much. 

72. Jeff Goldblum, Into The Night, 1985.     "I like it and I like you," he told the (loud) director John Landis. "But this guy doesn't really do anything. The audience likes the leading man to take action."  As usual, he was right, although  - apparently - none of the 15 directors guesting in the cast were honest enough to say the same to Landis.
    
    

73. Walter Matthau, Pirates, 1985.  
    The 1975 project kept bubbling in the early 80s: Nicholson as Cap'n Red, opposite Dustin Hoffman for director pal Roman Polanski.  "Jack wanted $4m My producer couldn’t live with that.  [Actually, Nicholson wanted  $1.25m in 1976]  against 10% of the gross].  And I'm glad he said no. I thought it unfair to the other people, me included.  I worked on the script so long. I invented the story and the character that Jack would play.  People like Jack get to that stage where they're not interested in what they do, just what they'll get."  Sean Penn would hardly agree... William Goldman suggested that casting Matthau was like "doing The Chuck Norris Story  with John Candy." The movie s(t)unk like a stone.
    
    

74. Harrison Ford, Witness, 1985.  Loved the script but there was no director attached  - or not when Jack was available. So he passed on the urban cop hunting a murder witness in Amish country. Chicago critic Robert Ebert hailed it as “an electrifying and poignant love story hidden in a murder thriller.” Not bad for what had once been an idea for an episode of US TV’s longest-running series, Gunsmoke,1955-1975.  Australian Peter Weir directed when his Mosquito Coasthad budget problems into money hassles. Ironcially, his star had been Nicholson - but Ford also made this one with Weir in 1986.

75. Harrison Ford, Mosquito Coast, 1986.    Australian director Peter Weir and his (obvious) first choice were beached when money went out with the tide in 1984.  Of his version, Ford said: "I'm not sure if we cracked it." They hadn't.

76. Kurt Russell, Big Trouble In Little China, 1985.     Once again, the studio preferred Clint or Jack. Director John Carpenter stuck to his choice, despite Russell’s recent string of flops. Result: Carpenter’s biggest turkey. Two years

77. Michael Caine, Hannah And Her Sisters, 1985.  According to a 2014 Woody Allen podcast, Jacko was first choice for Elliot. He was keen but dates clashed with Prizzi’s Honour.  Caine is said to have introduced Woody to Mia Farrow nearly 20 years before.
    

78. Gene Hackman, Hoosiers, 1985.   Jack was most keen on being the high school basketball coach Norman Dale but was tied up for six months as a lawsuit witness. Next year…?   Well, no he knew the project was on a short leash so "if you find another actor, go make your movie.” Director David Anspaugh rued the day he chose Hackman when the coolest guy to hang out with… became a comnstant black cloud  "He gave me my first anxiety attack,” Anspaugh told Vulture. "One morning I woke up and I couldn't walk, the room was spinning.”  Hackman even told co-star Dennis Hopper: "This is a career-ending film for both of us." In fact,  Dennis won his ony Oscar nomination   - “that should have been for Blue Velvet”  - and Hoosiers is #13 in  the American Film Institute's ranking oi the  top 100 most inspiring films ever made. Jack loved it. But added it would have been a mega-hit if he’d made it.  

79. Richard Dreyfuss, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, 1986.    Director Paul Mazursky met with “a stoned Nicholson” at his Mulholland Drive home.  “Merely sniffing the stuff got me a little high...”  Dreyfuss, even higher in  his day, accepted $600,000 for his comeback.
    

80. Mickey Rourke, Angel Heart, 1986.    On reading the script, Rourke described his private dick role as "a tired Nicholson."  Jack preferred Terms of Endearment.  And a  second Oscar.
    
    

81. Robert De Niro Angel Heart, 1986.  He also  refused to be Lou Cyphere. (Say it!). As he was already booked to be the devil the following year in The Witches  of Eastwick.

82. Sean Connery, Der Name der Rose/The Name of the Rose, France-Italy-West Germany, 1986.   Nicholson as a monk! Réalisateur Jean-Jacques Annaud was not keen on 007 as Umberto Eco’s medieval monk turned detective.  Columbia Pictures even refused financing if Connery was involved as his post-Bond star was imploding. Naturally, Brando topped Annaud’s further 14 ideas. Six Americans: Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Frederic Forrest, Paul Newman, Roy Scheider; four Brits: Michael Caine, Albert Finney, Ian McKellen, Terence Stamp; plus Canadian Donald Sutherland, French Yves Montand, Irish Richard Harris, Italian Vittorio Gassman and Swedish Max von Sydow. Connery’s reading was the best and his career exploded anew. Two years later, he won his support Oscar for The Untouchables.

83. Danny De Vito, Ruthless People, 1986. Writer Dale Launer’s version of O. Henry’s The Ransom of Red Chief, hung around at Columbia and then  Disney’s new adult unit, Touchstone, for years.  But Jack was always too pricey ($4m a movie back then) for the villain  who was, according to critic Roger Ebert, “the engine of murderous intensity.” 
84. Robert De Niro, Midnight Run, 1987.   There were 23 possibilites for the lean, mean  skip-tracer (tracing felons who skipped bail) - on the run from the  FBI and the Mob after capturing Vegas embezzler Charles Grodin. Who knew De Niro could be more subtle at comedy than… Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Charles Bronson, Michael Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Don Johnson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Ryan O’Neal (!), Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, Mickey Rourke, Kurt Russell, John Travolta, Jon Voight and even the musclebound Arnie and Sly - Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Director Martin Brest, that’s who.

85. Michael Douglas, Fatal Attraction, 1987.
    

86. Michael Douglas, Wall Street, 1987.    Can't you just hear him as Gordon Gekko - Alistair Campbell's personal trainer: "Lunch is for wimps."  And: "Greed is right, greed works."  Not forgetting: "When I get a hold of the son of a bitch who leaked this, I'm gonna tear his eyeballs out and I'm gonna suck his fucking skull." 

87. Kevin Costner, The Untouchables, 1987.     Did not want to be as straight as  Elliott Ness. One LAgent said: “If Jack wanted Canada, some studio boss would buy it, paint it red and park it in his driveway.”
    

88. Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1987.
    Surprisingly, the murder mystery where the chief suspect is a carton character was based on the never made Cloverleaf, Robert Towne’s third Jake Gittes script.  For Chinatown, read Toontown. So who should be Gittes, er, shamus Eddie Valiant? Well, why not Gittes, himself - aka Jack Nicholson? So who should be Gittes, er, shamus Eddie Valiant. Well, why not Gittes, himself - Jack Nicholson? No, producer Steven Spielberg could see no further than Harrison Ford. Too expensive!  OK, Chevy Chase, Ed Harris, Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone? Director Robert Zemeckis considered Charles Grodin, Don Lane, Eddie Murphy (soon a toon in the Shrek movies) and auditioned Peter Renaday. Also seen for the human shamus saving a cartoon star’s reputation in Hollywood 1947 were Charles Grodin, Ed Harris,  Don Lane, Joe Pantoliano, Robert Redford, Peter Renaday, Wallace Shawn, Sylvester Stallone. And they could never contact the hideaway Bill Murray… When he read that in a paper, Murray screamed out loud - he would have loved being Valiant.. in  what critic Roger Ebert  would call “a joyous, giddy, goofy celebration of the kind of fun you can have with a movie camera.” Not that much fun, reported Hoskins. “I had to hallucinate to do it,” he told Danish TV. After working with green screens for six months, 16 hours a day, he lost control.  “I had weasels and rabbits popping out of the wall at me.” 
    
    

89. Tom Cruise, Rain Man, 1988.  One Cuckoo was enough…  Robert De Niro, Mel Gibson and Jack Nicholson all passed on Raymoid Babbit.  Hoffman made it his own by changing Ray from mentally handicapped to an autistic savant. “Uh ho!”

90. Sidney Poitier, Little Nikita, 1988.  Conceived, developed at pre-Puttnam Columbia for Jack, the FBI agent became among Poitier's first roles for a 13 yearse. Didn't help Poitier. Nor David Puttnam. Nor Columbia. Indeed, when UK producer David Puttnam became the new Columbia boss, he told director Richard Benjamin that this was one of the worst movies he had ever seen.
    

91. Jeff Bridges, Tucker: A Man And His Dream, 1988.    When director Francis Coppola first tried to make it in 1977.  The  two titans have still never worked together.
    

92. Adam Baldwin, Next of Kin, 1989.  Nicholson, Alec Baldwin (no kin to Adam), Robert De Niro, Michael Keaton, Ray Liotta, John Malkovich, Sean Penn, Ron Perlman, Tim Robbins were seen for mobster Joey Rossellini in the hillbillies v the Mafia re-run of the same UK director John Irvin’s tons better Raw Deal, 1985.
    

93. Tom Hanks, Turner & Hooch, 1989. Chevy Chase, John Larroquette, Dudley Moore and Bill Murray all fled from police detective Scott Turner and his French mastiff dog in this Odd Coupleriff.  With the dog, Beasley, as Walter Matthau and, of course, Hanks is, was and always will be a second Jack Lemmon (in all his career choices). Henry Winkler, Happy Days’Fonzie, was sacked after two weeks as director by Disney suit Jeffrey Katzenberg - already dumb enough to have offered such a weak piece to the mighty Nicholson and then  made it a hat trick of errorsd by using wrong ending, where the dog dies. (A TVersion with Thomas F Wilson) never survived the putrid pilot. 
94. Warren Beatty, Dick Tracy, 1989.    But Jack was Jokering - and making a cool $60m! Also seen were Sonny Bono (for a  70s’ musical version with Cher as Tess),  Bruce Campbell, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Paul Newman, Robert Redford and even such total opposites as George C Scott and Tom Selleck were seen in ’89.  James Caan settled for a cameo as Splandoni.  Beatty agreed to direct if he could play Tracy, his boyhood idol.. “He’s the right height for a movie star,” maintained  Nicholson. “I’m too short.”
    
95. Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs, 1990.
96. Anthony Quinn, Revenge, 1990.     Friends since being introduced by the Missouri Breaks writer Thomas McGuane, novella-ist Jim Harrison first adapted his 1979 Esquire tale for Jack - as the brutal zillionaire shoving his unfaithful wife into a bordello. “If you want to be a whore, you can be one for the rest of your life.” A dream, heavy, said Jack, and sure, he’d direct as well if that helped get it made… when John Huston withdrew. Jonathan Demme and Sydney Pollack were also keen on the script which Clint Eastwood snapped up - and then swopped for Bird. Co-star Kevin Costner (with whom the young wife had been sparking) wanted to direct, as well. Tony Scott did that job.
97. Robert Redford, Havana, 1990.   Director Sydney Pollack's first (perfect) choice to partner Jane Fonda in 1978.  Judith Rascoe's script was brewing so long, she thought of it as "the corpse that walked - my zombie project."  Looked that way on-screen.
98. Harvey Keitel, Thelma & Louise, 1990.
    
    
99. James Caan, Misery, 1990.  
    “Leading men hate to be passive; hate to be eunuchised by their female co-stars."  Top scenarist William Goldman on why 22 actors avoided the prospect of being beaten up and beaten to an Oscar by  Kathy Bates as the mad fan of writer Paul Sheldon. Warren Beatty prevaricated but never actually said no (nor yes).  Richard Dreyfuss regretted disappointing director Rob Reiner again after refusing When Harry Met Sally, 1988 (they had earlier made a classic of   King’s novella, The Body, as Stand By Me, 1985).   William Hurt refused - twice. Jack Nicholson didn’t want another King guy so soon after The Shining.  While Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino being up  for the same role was nothing new  - but Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman was  Also fleeing the  32nd of Stephen King’s staggering 313 screen credits were Tim Allen, Jeff Daniels, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, close pals Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, Ed Harris, John Heard, Robert Klein, Bill Murray, Ed O’Neill, John Ritter, Denzel Washington, Robin Williams and Bruce Willis… who went on to be Sheldon in Goldman’s  2015 Broadway version.
    
    
100. Bruce Willis,  The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1990.    Instead of Jack, director Brian De Palma paid an action star with no following outside of action films, $5m -  that is $4m, more than his main star, Tom Hanks.  To play a British journalist!
101. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kindergarten Cop, 1990.    Go figure.
     
102. John Heard, Home Alone, 1990.   For the zero roles of Macauley Culkin’s forgetful parents (in a film written for and duly stolen by him), an astonishing 66 stars were considered - including 32 later seen for the hot lovers in Basic Instinct:Kim Basinger, Stockard Channing, Glenn Close, Kevin Costner, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Marilu Henner, Anjelica Huston, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Christopher Lloyd, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Annie Potts, Kelly Preston, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, John Travolta.   Other potential Pops were Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jeff Daniels, Tony Danza, John Goodman, Charles Grodin, Tom Hanks, Robert Hays, Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, Ed O’Neill, John Ritter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Skerritt, Robin Williams… and the inevitable unknowns: Broadway’s Mark Linn-Baker, Canadian musicians-comics  Alan Thicke ("the affordable William Shatner") and Dave Thomas.
     
103. Bruce Willis, The Last Boy Scout, 1991.  Or, originally, Die Hard – switched by producer Joel Silver to his 1987 film, Nothing Lasts Forever.  For another of wirier Shane Black’s buddy movies, Jack Nicholson and Mel Gibson were wanted for another of wirier Shane Black’s buddy movies.   They became Bruce Willis and Daman Wayans.  They did not get on. Nor did the movie. The only consistent theme of which,  said Chicago critic Roger Ebert, was  its hatred of women. 
     
104. Michael Douglas, Basic  Instinct, 1991.
105. Kevin Costner, JFK, 1991.
106. James Woods, The Hard Way, 1991.  Director John Badham needed help. He had a script  that would  work only with indelibly A-List stars. He  failed to win any. Woods signed on and won one helluva perk – his own hairdresser, costing Universal  a weekly $6,000.
107. Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman, 1991. First Nicholson, then Pacino, Harrison Ford, Dustin Hoffman, even Joe Pesci (sheer desperation time!) rejected the blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade.  Pacino’s agent talked him back into it. Result:  his much delayed Oscar. 
108. Stuart Wilson, Lethal Weapon 3, 1991.  The new (and rather ho-hum) ex-cop villain given to British Wilson was first offered by the franchise’s director Richard Donner  to five of  the 39 guys he’d seen for Mel Gibson’s Martin Riggs in 1986:  Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Michael Keaton, Al Pacino and John Travolta. Pus James Caan, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino.  NB This is the first time we see Gibson and Danny Glover actually making an arrest. Onluy took ‘em five years!
109. Sean Connery, Medicine Man, 1992.     For what was  called  Road Show in 1984.   Jack had been Hollywood director Martin Ritt’s choice for the renegade biochemist living deep in the Amazon rain forests, finding - and then losing - a cancer cure.  A somewhat  Kurtzian  figure, being checked up on by the Marlowesque Cher or Mary Steenburgen or Debra Winger - eventually Lorraine Bracco opposite a pig-tailed Connery. Not their finest hour, Critics were  either 100% for or against the (terrible) John McTiernan movie.
110. John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire, 1993.   Robert De Niro had been first choice for the wannabe presidential assassin - thwarted by Secret Service man Clint Eastwood who lost JFK in Dallas. Next? Nicholson and Robert Duvall. No budget could afford Clint and Jack - but what a great idea from German film-maker Wolfgang Petersen. One of Clint’s finest films.
     
     
111. Paul Newman, The Hudsucker Proxy, 1993. 
     The Coen brothers' first choice - and first refusal. “Sometimes I get flooded with scripts and think:  Jesus!  If I do all this, I’ll be working until I’m 65.   And at that age I’m pretty sure people won’t be that interested in me. I don’t  know if I’d be interested.”   Clint Eastwood also passed on being corporation czar Sidney J Mussburger in the capitalism satire, Made in ‘93 and set in ‘58, the film is rooted in ‘40s cinema and proved what we already knew.  There was only ever one Frank Capra.  Wary of comedy, Newman told Ethan and Joel to mke it without him. Instead, they waited him out - for ten years.
     
     
     
112. Michael Douglas, Falling Down, 1992.  “I lost my job. Well, actually I didn't lose it, it lost me. I am over-educated, under-skilled. Maybe it's the other way around, I forget. But I'm obsolete. I'm not economically viable.” The guy known only by his car number-plate, D-FENS, is suffering from society and melting down. Dangerously. Perfect, therefore, for Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Ed Harris, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Robin Williams - and, indeed, director Joel Schumacher’s choice of his pal, Douglas, in a Spartacus  buzz-cut, glasses and, finally, his very own  Cuckoo’s Nest.
113. Dennis Hopper, Speed, 1993.  Wanted: a villain (Nicholson or Robert De Niro or… ?)  putting a bomb on Bus 2525…  and telling Keanu Reeves to keep driving at  50mph or… boom!  Sorry lads, just has  to be Dennis! For Die Hard On A Bus! 
114. Ben Kingsley, Death and the Maiden, 1994.    Forgetting  his 1985 verbal attack on Jack, Roman Polanski called up his friends for his film of Ariel Dorfman’s play.  He wanted Anjelica Houston to tie ex-lover Nicholson to a chair, stuff his mouth with her panties and prove he is Dr Roberto Miranda who raped her 14 times when she was a political prisoner in an unamed Chile. (Glenn Close and Gene Hackman had the Broadway roles). Turning director, Sean Penn got the ex-lovers together  - masterfully - later that year  for The Crossing Guard.
     
115. Brad Pitt, Legends of the Fall, 1994.    Jack Pack stalwart, author and scripter Jim Harrison, had a glass eye and enough girth to be mistaken for Nicholson’s bodyguard. Jack  subsidised  Harrison’s writing  but never shot  any of his work until Wolf  in 1994 - ineffectual yet better than the mid-aged Jack trying to be the young Tristan Ludlow in what both Jim ’n’ Jack felt should have  been a much grittier Western saga.  Anthony Hopkins, who played Pitt’s father, was Jack’s age at the time: 56.
     

116. Anthony Hopkins, The Road To Wellville, 1994.    First reserve if Hopkins changed his mind about being the eccentric inventor of the corn flake, peanut butter and medical instruments to scrub the body inside and out - Dr John Harvey Kellogg.

117. Nick  Nolte, Jefferson In Paris, 1994.    Hey, a year off means a year off! Even if the proffered  role ws the third POTUS, Thomas Jefferson.
118. Richard Attenborough, Miracle on 34th Street, 1994.  John Hughes directed the re-make of the 1946 classic - after it had been rejected by Bond and Superman writer and newly director, Ton Mankiewicz.  “When Fox offered me that picture, I was smarter than John Hughes because I said, If I can’t get Sean Connery or Jack Nicholson for Kris Kringle, I ain’t doing it.” Hughes chose the one actor around with a full Kringle (ie Santa Claus) white beard. It wasn’t long before both Hughes and Mankiewicz quit, disillusioned with Hollywood. They loved writing, directing - “the work!” - not the bullshit. (Mank’s friend, Natalie Wood, had been in the original age eight).

119. John Malkovich, Mary Reilly, 1995.     Four years before, Jack was director-pal Roman Polanski's sole choice as Mary's employer, Dr Henry Jekyll.  Impossible just after Wolf...  Besides he was moving into to interior roles for actor-director Sean Penn.

120. Dennis Hopper, Waterworld, 1995.  As director Kevin Reynolds rushed through the ripest villains, Jack was ruled out.  Too expensive - for what proved the most expensive film (then) in history, totaling (with prints and advertising) $200m.  Dennis filled in and stole the movie from a waterlogged Kevin Costner. Easily!

121.  Harvey Keitel, Clockers, 1995.    Martin Scorsese, the director,  wanted who else but Robert De Niro as the cop.  Then,  Scorsese, the producer,  wanted Jack. while  Spike Lee, the new director, wanted John Turturro.
     
     

122. Anthony Hopkins, Nixon, 1995.   
     Director Oliver Stone had two thoughts only for Tricky Dicky: Nicholson or Warren Beatty!    But for  Jack, Jimmy Hoffa was more than enough in the biopic biz... Later  candidates included Gene Hackman, Tom Hanks, Tommy Lee Jones,  John Malkovich, Gary Oldman and Robin Williams - and poor John Malkovich, stilling chewing over the script when the Welsh outsider was selected. Hopkins was the right age at 58. "He worked on the accent and the gestures," said writer-director Oliver Stone, "and he became Nixon."  Almost.  (Dan Heyda (Stone’s Trini Cordoza) was Nixon in Dick, 1998).
     
     

123. Bruce Dern, Mulholland Falls, 1996.    "This isn't America.  This is LA..." MGM was alive and well again and asked Jack for a cameo as The Chief.  Jack passed - “give it to Dernsie” - while making some dreadful choices: Man Trouble, Blood and Wine,  Evening Star, Mars Attacks, etc.

124. Nick Nolte, Mulholland Falls, 1996.    "This isn't America.  This is LA..." MGM was alive and well again and asked Jack for a cameo as The Chief.  Jack passed - “give it to Dernsie” - while making some dreadful choices: Man Trouble, Blood and Wine, Evening Star, Mars Attacks, etc.
     

125. Chazz Palminteri, Diabolique, 1996.     When Jack preferred another Bob Rafelson trip, the indifferent  Blood and Wine,  the Warner choices dissipated, like the rotten re-make itself, right down the line to Gabriel Byrne,  Jeremy Irons and  Big Chazz.

126. John Travolta, Michael, 1996.     Probably the first time anyone who had played the Devil was asked to play an angel - even one who drinks, screws and smells too much! 
     

127. Robert De Niro, The Fan, 1996.     An obsessive nutter stalking his baseball hero?   Obviously more Bob than Jack. Instead, he kept the faith with his pals. Like Bob Evans  (as producer, not actor) for The  Two Jakes, and  now a fourth Bob Rafelson outing: Blood and Wine. Neither one a good vintage.
     

128. Raymond J Barry, The Chamber, 1996.   As if spending $7m on the John Grisham novel was not enough, Universal decided to chase Ncholson - by beefing up the (colourless) villain, Rollie Wedge.  Didn’t work. Except for the fairly unknown Barry.

129. Matthew McConaughey, Contact, 1997.     The (so-so) film of Carl Sagan’s (better) book did not move him. Everybody and  his wife also had “Jack scripts.”  He even  had a nightmare of his mother coming out of her grave:  “Psst! Come here, son, I want you to have a look at  this script.”

130. Burt Reynolds, Boogie Nights, 1997. Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray and director Sydney Pollack were offered the porno film-maker Jack Horner in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s exploration of the 70s porno biz as a family unit  (Burt Reynolds’ film-maker and Julianne Moore’s porno star being “the parents”). Also seen: Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, who had been supporters of hardcore star Harry Reems during his 1977 legal hassles.  Pollack regretted refusing the role. and Reynolds regretted accepting it. He rowed with PTA, won the best reviews of his career, a Golden Globe and his one and only Oscar nomination.  Yet he still still fled PTA’s Magnolia, 1999.
     

131. Woody Allen, Deconstructing Harry, 1997.    Woody insisted that  De Niro, Gould, Hoffman and Nicholson  were among the many stars telling him: ‘I’m dying to work with you - I’d do anything.’ Except when he offered them Harrry  “they’re  they’re not available or they can’t work for the pay I’m offering.”   Harry - “always thinking of fucking every woman  I meet” - was a slimeball. Not when  Woody played him.
     
     

132. William H Macey, Psycho, 1997.  
     So who should be Detective Milton  Arbogast again?  He’s been done. Twice, Alfred Hitccock was ill the day he was supposed to shoot actor Martin Balsam  falling  backwards down the stairs.  His crew shot it for him. Hiitch didn’t like it and shot it again. It’s a classic.  And by The Master. So why re-make Hitchcock?  Ah, beg pardon, Gus Van Sant called it a reproduction. A bizarre (lazy!) notion of copying  -  the Psycho  script, word for word, action for action, move for move, shock for shock (except the shocks were too famous to  shock anymore). “Just shoot it in color and have, for instance, Jack Nicholson play the detective and Timothy Hutton play Norman Bates,” he suggested. Apparently, Universal couldn’t  afford them - they became Macy And Vince Vaughn. But what had Van Sant said about re-makes? “The essence is missing. You might as well make an original movie.” Exactly! 

133. James Woods, Hercules, 1997.   Many were called - Nicholson, David Bowie, Willem Dafoe, Michael Keaton. Then, John Lithgow got the Disney gig and recorded it all. Next thing he knew, Jimmy Woods had ad-libbed the voice of Hades to glory with Robin Williams/Aladdin bravura. And made it a growth industry with various video games.
     

134. Johnny Depp, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, 1998.   One bravura 70s notion had been Nicholson as Hunter S Thompson and Marlon Brando as Dr Gonzo.
 "I tell you what," said Depp, "I'd have watched that movie. I'd still be watching it. Nonstop. God, that would have been amazing!" He was forgetting their lamentable Missouri Breaks, 1976. About as rotten as this Hunter S Tnompson take.

135. Geoffrey Rush,  Les Miserables, 1998.      Director Roman Polanski was making up to Jacko yet again -  offering him Javert, this time.  But Danish film-maker Bille August made the literally miserable film.

136. John Travolta, Primary Colors, 1998.    Jack as his golfing buddy, Bill Clinton? Or the thinly disguised version in Time magazine columnist Joe Klein’s novel, depicting a sex scandal of its own. As Jack said about the Monica Lewinksy episode: “What would be the alternative leadership... somebody who doesn’t want  to have sex?”
     
     

137. William Hurt, The  Big Brass Ring,  1998.  
     More politics…  Orson Welles was trying the impossible in 1976 - to mount a Hollywood movie.  Pal Henry Jaglom was helping. In his 1971 debut, A Safe Place, Jaglom had  directed Jack - and now  asked him to play the gay Texas senator and Presidential hopeful.  Potential investors said Welles needed to get Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds… They all passed. (So did the investors). Jack had no qualms about   playing a closet gay, he simply  refused to lower his $2m salary (it equaled the proposed budget).  “I’d charge my mother my fee!” Some 13 years  after Orson’s death,  Missouri auteur George Hickenlooper adapted the 1982-1987 Welles-Oja Kodar scenarios, with Hurt running for governor of Missouri (hah!) and  colliding  into his past… the aged political mentor that Welles reserved for himself.  Criticised for adapting Welles, Hickenlooper said: “Welles in many respects was the Shakespeare of the American cinema. So, if Welles adapted Shakespeare, why not adapt Welles?”
     
     

138. George Clooney, Three Kings, 1999.      Or two, anyway...   Director David O Russell and his star, Clooney. Well, not his star, actually. He’d wanted Nicholson, Jeff Bridges (but his Big Lebowski had flopped), Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Dustin Hoffman or Nick Nolte (the only one to admit he was too old for Major Gates).  Or even Nicolas Cage, but he was BringingOut The Dead. So as far as Russell was concered, he was stuck with Clooney - working three days a week on ER in LA, and four for Russell. No wonder their relationshjp was fractious: rows and punch-ups. Their  main fight had been over Russell’s treatment of an extra,  throwing him to the ground.  He then foolishly  taunted Clooney. “Hit me!”  So, George  obliged him!

139. Dustin Hoffman, Jeanne d'Arc  (US: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Ark), France, 1999.  "I’m glad it wasn’t him," said St. Joan, herself, Milla Jovovich. "He’s an incredible actor but it’s Hoffman I want to work with."

140. Charlie Sheen, Rated X, TV, 1999.     Before the Estevez brothers made their Showtime version, Sean Penn was due to direct an adaptation of David McCumber’s book about the porn-film-making Mitchell Brothers - starring Nicholson and Robert De Niro as  Artie and Jim.   Sheen agreed to play Artie as long as his brother, Emilio Estevez, directed and played Jim. 

141. Adam Sandler, Big Daddy, 1999.  Chris Farley sadly ODed months before he was due for what was then Guy Gets Kid. His Sonny was a lazy toolbooth attendant “adopting” a five-year-old boy (played by twins) to impress his girlfriend. And so Sandler collected a hefty cut of the $235m box-office. I still can’t see why. We’ve seen such bonding comedy before: Chaplin’s The Kid, Shirley Temple’s Little Miss Marker, Jim Belushi’s Curly Sue, evenTakeshi Kitano’s Japanese Kikujiro the previous year and, Hugh Grant’s About a Boy to come in 2001.  Yawn!  No wonder Nicholson and Bill Murray fled.
     

142. Will Smith, The Legend Of Bagger Vance, 1999.   Bagger is a mysterious caddy saving a golden golfer who lost his swing in WWI. Director Robert Redford knew the game. He’d started playing when a Bel Air Club caddy… in 1948!  He even thought of starring a second time in a film he directed. He switched to Hollywood golf stars - Connery and Jack Nicholson. Way too old!  OK, Morgan Freeman saving Brad Pitt? Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks company came aboard, suggesting Matt Damon and Will Smith. Chicago critic Roger Ebert called it the first zen movie - finding peace with the thing you do best.

143. Jim Carrey, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, 2000.     Only time Jack was up for the same role as Eddie Murphy.   
     
     

144. James Garner, Space Cowboys, 2000.     
     Imagine the pitch.   Eastwood, Connery and Nicholson.  Story? Who cares!  Jack had told Clint that The Crossing Guard would be his finale in 1995. “Well, he went  on to act in about ten more movies and I went on  to act in or  direct six more. They keep saying Yes to you...” Jack, however, said No to, more or less reprising, Garrett Breedlove.   (Tim Burton couldn’t get them, together, either, for The Hakline Monster).
     
     

145. Tony Goldwyn, The 6th Day, 2000.    Too expensive as the villain, given that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the headliner. "With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and seventy."
     

146. Ed Harris, Pollock, 2000.   Harris stuck to his guns and his rights, while throughout  the 80s everyone saw only Jack as Jackson.  From Gerald Ayres, producer of The Last Detail, to Andy Warhol - who cast Jack and Angelica as the alcoholic, manic-depressive painter and his lady Ruth Kligman... without even asking them!

147. Tim Curry, Charlie’s Angels, 2000. Drew Barrymore bought the movie rights and proved herself as star and producer.  Daring to chase, for example, Jack for baddy Roger Corwin, boss of the Redstar communications-satellite company. Jack smiled, passed, and smiled again.  Enter: Curry.

148. Woody Allen, The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, 2000.   Nicholson, Tom  Hanks passed… “Every actor I offered the lead to turned it down,” reported Woody Allen in his 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing  “I was forced to play it myself and consequently I am the weak link in  the movies…  a modest success despite my crippling presence.”

149. David Ogden Stiers, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,  2001.   Too pricey  for even  a  cameo as Zoltan the hypnotist - who can mention  the  magic word  that  turns  Woody Allen’s insurance investigator CW Briggs into a burglar.
     

150. Ian Holm, The Emperor's New Clothes, 2001.     Jack announced - appropriately in Paris;  March 7, 1984 -  that he had bought the rights to novelist Simon Leys' novel, The Death of Napoleon, and would direct the film. That was the last heard of it until The Full Monty producer Uberto Pasolini started  his version in Italy on September 11, 2000.  Nicholson  agreed with the Nitzsche and Shaw's view of Napoleon: "He's the strongest, most unique man Western culture ever produced. And he really knew how to make a comeback!"
     
     

151. Robin Williams, One Hour Photo, 2002.       Passed on Sy The Photo Guy,  the ideal employee of every month, secretly obsessed with a young family whose pix he  develops and prints in the titular store.   Enter: Williams - originally booked for the SavMart manager. Sy is among Williams’ top five roles, worthy of more than horror awards. 
     

152. Morgan Freeman, Bruce Almighty, 2002.    “I'm the one. The Divine Being. Alpha and Omega...” Nicholson and Robert De Niro passed on playing God – which perfectly suited Freeman as He taught Jim Carrey just how difficult the deity business is. Jack, of course, had already been The Devil in The Witches of Eastwick, 1986, and would partner Freeman in The Bucket List, 2007.
     
     

153. Albert Finney, Big Fish,  2003.  When Spielberg fooled around with the script, he wanted Jack... 
     

154. Ewan McGregor, Big Fish,  2003.  So did Tim Burton when he inherited it  - and for both the young and older Edward Bloom, with computer aid.  Tim adored McGregor, who played the young Finney: “He reminds me of Johnny Depp.”  Praise, indeed.
     
     

155. Billy Bob Thornton, Bad Santa, 2003.    Keen. Yet committed  to something better.  Something’s Gotta Give was  written by auteur Nancy Myers for him and the lady he dubbed “Special K” - Diane Keaton. (And her  first full frontal nude scene  (at age 57) Also passing on the titular Willie were Larry David, Dennis Leary  and Bill Murray.  Jack won his 11th Oscar nomination, surpassing Olivier. His 12th nod for About Schmidt, 2001, placed him one behind Meryl Streep.
     

156. Kevin Spacey, Superman Returns, 2005.
     

157. Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 2006.   Probably the most obvious choice during some 25 years in Development Hell. Other titular casting also included Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Steve Martin, Al Pacino. Tim Curry was the sole Brit considered and the most lunatic notions were... Warren Beatty. Harrison Ford and Robert Redford!

158. Seth Rogen, Paul, UK-US, 2009.   They had their alien.  They had their Hollywood deal. All they needed was Paul’s voice.  Funny Brits Simon Pegg and Nick Frost suggested Jack  - they wanted their great alien to have oldish tones.  They actually suggested Jack or Rip Torn. (Ho, ho!  Jack had famously taken over Torn’s role in Easy Rider).  Finally, Seth Rogen (and not Bill Hader) supplied the Paul-speak.

159. Mark Strong, Kick Ass, 2009.   As well as Aaron Johnson as Kick Aas, there was Chole Grace Moretz as a Daddy-Nic-Cage-trained Hit Girl - taking down a crime bosss. The comic-book writer Mark Miller todd The Guardian about sitting in a pub with his writer-diector Matthew Vaughnsat discussing who should be her target. “The first three names were: Pacino, De Niro and Jack Nicholson. Then we realised how physical the part was going to be and decided to go a generation younger.”
     
     

160. Andy Serkis, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, 2009. 
     When he first started developing the film in 1984 - as a live-action movie -  Steven Spielberg had one idea only for Captain Haddock.  And  Nicholson pal Danny De Vito was later booked for Senor Oliveira de Figueira - cut from the finished animation movie shot  in 32 days by Spielberg   March 2009. After which, co-director Peter Jackson supervised the CGI.
     
     

161. Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables, 2011.  Oh, Hollywood… Since the musical’s 1985 London opening, suggestions for Jean Valjean went from the logical - Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, William Hurt, Kevin Kline - to the preposterous: Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Robert Redford, Christopher Walken.  Plus close pals, rarely rivals, Nicholson and Warren Beatty. However, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman  and Al Pacino were  far too short for the hefty hero who, in a signature scene, has to carry Cosette’s lover, away from the battle of the barricades.  Put it another way, Hollywood’s last Valjean had been Liam Neeson - 6ft. 4in.  (Jack had been up for Valjean’s nemesis, Inspector Javert, in that 1998  version).
     

162. Jesse Eisenberg, The Double,  2012.    Seventeen years earlier,   Roman Polanski had great trouble trying to film Dostoievski’s tale  of a  man faced with his doppleganger and total opposite: confident, charismatic, good with women. (Last made by Bertolucci as Partner, 1968). John Travolta rejected $8m (and Paris) in June 1995. Polanksi  offered  Nicholson the same package as before: a  Paris shoot opposite Isabelle Adjani. Anthony Hopkins had no time, Al  Pacino wasn’t keen, Steve Martin was - but the project collapsed when Adjani stalked followed by Polanski.  Jesse (just 12 during this time) finally made it in London for actor-director Richard Ayoade.
     

163. Christophe Waltz,  Horrible Bosses 2, 2013.  Jack and Tommy Lee Jones were in the mix for the slick villain.  TLJ didn’t seem to mind them (Men In Black, etc), but Jack was never  keen on sequels.  Only agreed to two. The son of Chinatown, The Two Jakes, 1989, because he was directing it -  and  The Terms of Endearmentfollow-up, The Evening Star, 1995, because he wasn’t.

164. Robert Duvall, The Judge, 2013.    Jack and Tommy Lee Jones were also sought for the titular father of lawyer Robert  Downey Jr - accused of murder just when his son goes home for his mother’s funeral.
     

165. Bill Murray,  St Vincent, 2013.  Producer-director Theodore Melfi’s first feature owed a bundle to Takeshi Kitanio’s 1989 Cannes festival entry, Kikujirô no natsu(which I always felt Clint Eastwood should have re-tooled).  Inevitably, Jack was Theodore-ex-Ted’s initial thought for the tough curmudgeon looking after a neigbour’s lonely son. Surprise, surprise, the grumpy old bastard has a heart of gold. Probably too much so for Jack’s liking. As for (the perfect) Murray, his one-time co-star Tilda Swinton  said he had “a certain rare animal - snow leopard - quality.  Kinda dangerous as well as exotic.”
     

166. Mel Gibson, The Expendables 3, 2013.     Having shown his villainy chops in Batman and The Departed, Nicholson was first offered Conrad Stonebanks. He passed. Easily. As did Gibson, at first, nearly letting Tom Sizemore into the frame.

167. Alec Baldwin, Rules Don’t Apply, 2014.  Gestating since 1973, Warren Beatty’s film about Howard Hughes  (“he was just so amusing to me”) is also a Hollywood love story about two kids employed by the fruitcake billionaire. Alas, Beatty isnot Bertolucci or Coppola enough to mix the two tales… Baldwin  was also in the Scorsese-DiCaprio Howard Hughes bio-study, The Aviator, 2003 -  as Hughes’ main adversary, Pan Am World Airways founder Juan Trippe. Here Baldwin is on HH’s side as ex-spy Robert Maheu, a key confidante of the eccentric billionaire… without ever meeting him. What Beatty gave us (while channelling Nicholson rather than Hughes)  is a cinematic Spruce Goose. It takes off but never really flies.

168. James Cromwell, Big Hero 6, 2014.   Six super heroes. So they naturally require one super-nemesis. Who better than (the masked) Robert Callaghan, head of a robotics at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. The voicing gig for Disney’s first Marvel subject -  after The Big Buy-Out but before Kevin Feige created the  Marvelverse, and  winning the best animation Oscar - was aimed at Jason Alexander, Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges, Jim Carrey, Danny De Vito, John Goodman, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Hoskins, Michael Keaton, John Malkovich, Eddie Murphy, Jack  Nicholson, Gary Oldman, Joe Pesci, JK Simmons, Jeffrey Tambor….plus the great Gilbert Gottfried, putting the resto by scoring 179 screen roles in 41 years!   They all made way for Cromwell. Ten years earlier, he had created the I, Robot called Sonny, played by Alan Tudyk… here playing Cromwell’s arch rival, Alistair Krei. 

169. Mark Wahlberg, Deepwater Horizon, 2015.   Wahlberg in a Nicholson role!  Wait, it gets funnier…  The actor’s director mate, Peter Berg, wanted a young/old duo.  Right! Wahlberg (also the producer) started calling some wrinklies. Like Jack… they’d shared Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Then, Berg dropped the other shoe…  He meant Wahlberg as the oldie opposite Dylan O’Brien, 24 -  in the reconstruction of the titular oil exploration platform killing eleven BP workers and causing history’s worst oil-spill  on April 20, 2010.

Tribute>>>>>>

“There’s Jack Nicholson - and then there’s everyone else.” Robin Williams

1. Michael Landon,  I Was A Teenage Werewolf, 1956.    "Jack was the wrong type," said producer Herman Cohen.  Like: neither   teen or werewolf?   He waited 37 years and then did his own lycanthropian thing, Wolf  (with director Mike Nichols), based on Jim Harison’s novel, in 1993.
2. Gene Hackman, Bonnie and Clyde, 1965.
3. Bruce Dern, The Trip, 1967.   Jack wrote Peter Fonda’s guide for himself, then lost a second role when Roger Corman had more faith in Jack as a writer. (His 1959 acting income came to: $1,900). His original script, said Dern, “was just sensational.”  No hard feelings. When Nicholson called him for King of Marvin Gardens,  Jack said: “Our kingdom has come, Dernsie.” Jack's certainly had.Dernsie's got lost in ensuing shuffles.
4. Dustin Hoffman, The Graduate, 1967.     Broadway’s Mike Nichols came to town and saw, tested, auditioned and sometimes called back (Nicholson certainly) almost every guy of the correct age for the titular Benjamin Braddock.  From Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and  the kid from Shane (De Wilde, now 25 and dead in a Denver road accident at 30) to Robin (Burt Ward, too busy in TV’s Batman)… Plus Keir Dullea, Harrison Ford, Charles Grodin (he won Nichols’ next, Catch 22 instead), George Hamilton, Steve McQueen, Michael Parks, George Peppard. And the prerequisite outsider: MGM pactee turning director, Lee Stanley.
5. John Cassavetes,Rosemary's Baby, 1968.    Laurence Harvey ached for it. But director Roman Polanski wanted an actor who looked an actor - and even TV-commercialish all-American. Hearing that description, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford backed off. Among those auditioning was "a complete unknown who'd played in some eminently forgettable horror films. For all his exceptional talents, his faintly rakish and sinister appearance disqualified him for the role of an upstanding, clean-cut, conventionally handsome young actor." Polanski was discussing... not John, but Jack!
6. Franco Nero, Un tranquillo posto di campagna (UK: A Quiet Place in the Country), Italy-France, 1968.    Maestro Elio Petri wanted Jack - didn’t everyone! - and settled for Nero as the burnt out  painter in what Pdtri called an “experimental” psychological horror movie. Nero suggested co-starring with his lover, “la Signorina Redgrave.” He made four films with Vanessa.  Nicholson was already pally with  Bertolucci at this point  and was working, six years later,  with Antonioni. Petri had met Jack and hisearly work (Ride The Whirlwind, The Shooting) on the ‘60s Euro festival circuit. Jack, however,was too busy - giving Head to The Monkees, and replacing Rip Torn in somethng called Easy Rider.
7. Michael Burns, That Cold Day in the Park, 1969.    Too old, said directorRobertAltman!Poor Jacko. Too old - and notyet a star - at 32!No matter, theEasy Rider bikes were parked around the next corner.
8. Dennis Hopper, The Last Movie, 1971.   "We had some conversations about it, but Dennis wanted to play the part himself."
9. Dustin Hoffman, Straw Dogs, 1971.      No fan of movie violence, Hoffman confessed he accepted the milque-toast husband(also refused by Beau Bridges, Stacy Keach, Sidney Poitier) - just for the money.
10. Robert Fields, The Sporting Club, 1971.     Director Larry Peerce tried hard to interest Jack in this close-up on power, corruption and hypocrisy ina rich man's paradise. The novel was by Thomas McGuane, who wrote Jack’s Missouri Breaks, 1976, and Peerce had directed Goodbye, Columbus, 1969, making a star of Ali McGraw, future wife of Jack Pack-er, producer Robert Evans.
    
    
11. Jon Voight, Deliverance, 1972.     Jack agreed - as long as his neighbour and idol, Brando, played the other role. “He said he despised acting,” said director John Boorman. “Acting was nothing more than mimicry - a bunch of tricks.”Even so, Brandoagreed: “I’ll take whatever you pay Jack.”Great. Except Jack’s agent Sandy Bresler wanted what Warners was paying Redford for Jeremiah Johnson - $500,000.Andthat ruined the budget.
12. Bruce Dern, King of Marvin Gardens, 1972.      Director Bob Rafelson switched his Staebler siblings - makingNicholson the introvert dee-jay and turning Dernsie into a riff on Jack as the expansive, older bro.
13. Al Pacino, The Godfather, 1971.
14. Edward Fox, Day of the Jackal, 1973.      Discussedit with gentlemandirector Fred Zinnemann in London. However,Fred preferred a more anonymous actor, got his way and that,as he would freely confess,seriously underminedthe film’s box-office.
15. Jason Miller, The Exorcist, 1973.
16. Robert Redford, The Sting, 1973.     "I like it... the period setting, the whole project, and I know it will be commercial.But I need to put my energies into a movie that really needs them. I need to take a risk."And that was Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky inThe Last Detail, sitting upon a Columbia shelf until society caughtuphis and Robert Towne’s "bad language." Result: Best Actor at Cannes and the UK Oscar. "But not getting the Academy Award hurt real bad.That was my best role.How often does one like that come along,one that fits you?"Oh, at least twice more...
17. Ryan O'Neal, Paper Moon, 1973.      Director Peter Bogdanovich always cast what he saw as versions of himself - except he was never Jack-cool. Paramount production chief Robert Evans suggested Jack (or Warren Beatty) when trying to nix O'Neal... who had been sleeping with Mrs Evans, Ali MacGraw.
    
    
18. Robert Redford, The Great Gatsby.
    “The only really good role I’ve rejected - and I could kill myself - was Jay Gatsby... Since I was 18,            people said I should do Gatsby. I didn’t really go after the part for well, personal reasons I don’t want printed.” 
     
    19 >> Sam Waterston, The Great Gatsby, 1973.     Jack’s screenwriter pal, Robert Towne,recalled being on his tennis court when Paramount chief Robert Evans tried totalkNicholson into playing Nick Carraway.Jack said:“Sure, I’d be happy to - as long as you re-title the movie Nick & Jay.Paul Newman, The Towering Inferno, 1974.Suggested by Steve McQueen as someone strong enough to hold his own against him.
19. Michael Lonsdale, India Song, France, 1975.   French cinematographer Bruno Nuytten said Jack was approached by novelist Marguerite Duras to take the lead in this version of her book, The Vice-Consul..
20. Paul Newman, Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull'sHistory Lesson, 1976.Revered director Robert Altman saw Bill Cody as the first movie star - "the first totally manufactured American hero and that's why we need a movie star."
     
21. Robert De Niro, The Last Tycoon, 1976.     
    Each director saw the titular Monroe Stahr differently:  Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Al Pacino.  Jack simply cameoed union leader Brimmer. Instead of paying him his cut of the action, producer Sam Spiegel offered  something from his  art collection. As Jack’s manager, Sandy Bressler said   he didn’t want any painting, “but… a complete accounting of the gross for the movie… not a guestimate...” “Jack won’t sue me,” said Sam.   But he did! 
    
    
22. David Carradine, Bound For Glory, 1976.     Hal Ashby’s firstcholce - singer Tim Buckley ODed. So Ashby sentfor his star of his abrasive Last Detailbut Jack didn’t see himself as Woody Guthrie and suggested his true idol - Bob Dylan. Nicholson was more keen onanotherfilm that Ashby was being pushed to make - a book that Nicholson had tried to option at age 26 in 1963. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
23. Donald Sutherland,Casanova, 1976.    In one year he'd passed on Buffalo Bill, Monroe Stahr, Woody Guthrie and now Giacomo... As per usual, maestro Federico Fellini played with the idea of superstars - Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Al Pacino, even Robert Redford!! -before settling for a more parochial venture with, maybe, Alberto Sordi, Gian Maria Volonte or the unknown cabaret performer Tom Deal. Ultimately, it was “Donaldino.” He had sharedPaul Mazursky’s 8½, Alex in Wonderland, 1970, with Fellini in Hollywood and they metagain on the set of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 in 1975.
24. Keith Carradine, Lumière, France, 1976.     Jeanne Moreau wanted Jack for her directing debut, until "dreaming over an early Gary Cooper," she saw a Carradine film and he cancelled a recording session to make the film. He fit the bill of "a very tall, lovely young man," the oppositeof the French industry's usual "small, tiny, darkcreatures." Jeanne’s friend("never mylover"), realisateur Louis Malle, then chose Carradine for Pretty Baby.
25. Bruce Dern, Family Plot, 1976.    Because of a little something called One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, he hadto miss what proved Alfred Hitchcock’s last hurrah.Hitch had first (and oddly) paired Nicholson with... Liza Minnelli. Jack suggested his pal, Dernsie.
26. Dennis Hopper, Tracks, 1976. Director Henry Jaglom wrote it for Jack and the spaced-out Vietnam vet escorting a coffin  home was still called Jack when Dennis played it - in  his Hollywood comeback after eight years away imbibing every illegal substance known to man, man. Jaglom insisted he wrote Nicholson’s  famous Five Easy Pieces diner explosion - “and hold it between your knees” – for this film! ” (Based on a similar incident when Jack couldn’t order wheat toast  at the LA patisserie, Pupi’s). Carole Eastman,  who wrote Five Easy Pieces, says the opposite, of course. And, anyway, Pieces director Bob Rafelson thinks he wrote it.  “Rashomon,” said Jaglom.
27. Robert De Niro, Novocento/1900, Italy,1976. In need of an US star, Italian maestro Bernardo Bertolucci’s first thought for the artistocratic Alfredo was his pal Jack - until seeing De Niro working with Francis Coppola on The Godfather: Part II.
28. Martin Sheen,Apocalypse Now, 1976.
    
    
29. Richard Dreyfuss, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1976.  For once, Spielberg felt he needed an A star: Hackman, Hoffman or McQueen. Jack's agent, Sandy Bresler, told co-producer Julia Phillips: "He didn't want to fight the effectsbuthe'd sure take points anytime. He's saying: It's a hit!" Not so worried about the Mothership, Dreyfuss agreed to $500,000 and five gross points.
30. Richard Burton, Equus, 1977.    Burton buried his rivals by going back on Broadway in the role, to prove he could still cut it. Still didn't net him an Oscar. Nothing ever did - from seven nominations.
    
31. Roy Scheider, Sorcerer, 1977.    For his awful mess of re-treading theFrench classic, Wages of Fear, 1953, US director William Friedkin regretted not trying to agree to Steve McQueen’s stipulations. Next choices, Clint Eastwood and Nicholson had no interest in working abroad. Or, indeed with Friedkin, whokindly stated that Scheider was his worst casting decision. "He’s a second or third banana, not a star." Rather like Friedkin...
32. Richard Burton, The Exorcist II: The Heretic, 1976.
33. Richard Dreyfuss, The Goodbye Girl, 1977.    "The man is undirectable," said stage-screen director Mike Nichols after his notorious run-in with Robert De Niro(far too fresh in from Taxi Driver) on the Neil Simon comedy that started out as Bogart Slept Here - eventually being respun fromMarsha Mason's angle. The Dreyfuss angle wontheOscar
34. Anthony Hopkins, Magic, 1978.    Producer Joe Levine wanted A Star. Jack said fine, but you'll have to wait for a few months. He was Goin' South (wasn't he though!)-and directing again.
35. Keith Carradine, Pretty Baby, 1978.Jill-of-all-trades Polly Platt has never been able to see the film and still bristles at any mention of French realisateur Louis Malle. He was furious with her for "taking over the film" by contacting Nicholson - "a very bad choice"! - and so, she argued, Malle wrecked her script, by using Carradine as the photographer Bellocq."I felt like the little girl.Bought, sold, screwed!"
36. Jon Voight, Coming Home, 1978.      His Last Detail director Hal Ashby called in October 1976.Leading lady Jane Fonda called. Nicholsonquit when true Brit director John Schlesinger left to make Yanksin Britain, passingthe impotent Vietnam war veteran - and an Oscar - to Voight.
37. Malcolm McDowell, Caligula, 1978.
38. Jack Lemmon, The China Syndrome, 1979.   Producer Michael Douglas' original game plan: Nicholson, Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss."But the Kubrick thing was in the works. [The Shining].He could still have done it but he was floating around.I love to tease him about it now, boy!"
    
    
39. Paul Le Mat, Melvin and Howard, 1980.Jack passedthe scenario to his Goin' South find, Mary Steenburgen. "Here's an example of a great film script."Indeed. She won an Oscar for it -in her third film.
    
40. Bill Murray, Where The Buffalo Roam, 1980.Entire concept of the film failed without the obvious star as gonzo journalist Dr Hunter S Thompson - who then talked to Jack aboutdoing Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
41. Robert Redford, Brubaker, 1980.     Bob Rafelsonwas directing so obviously the prison (governer) drama was set for Jack. The fact the director couldn’t deliverThe Star wasamong the reasons poor Rafelsonwas deep-sixed byFox chief Alan Ladd Jr.Journeyman helmer Stuart Rosenberg finished the ho-hum movie. Jack stuck by Bob for The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981.
42. Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark,1980.
43. Steve Martin, Pennies From Heaven, 1981.     Among the many rejections in 1981 as he considered a more “biographical approach” to future projects - like his pet subjects: Napoleon and directing something to “put across the ideas of Wilhelm Reich.”
44. Albert Finney, Annie, 1981.When the original producer David Begelman quitdue to the scandal of him forging Cliff Robertson’s signature on a cheque, Jack kept the faith and left with him.Although disliking the Broadway musical, new producerRay Stark said: ”This is the film I want on my tombstone.” Hence, Time critic Richard Corliss’ comment: ”Funeral services are being held at a theater near you.”
45. Louis Gossett Jr,An Officer and a Gentleman, 1982.     Jack was too expensive and Mandy Pantinkin “too ethnic” for Gunnery Sergeant Foley, “a Southern white guy.” In a flash of (well researched) inspiration, director Taylor Hackfordmade the tough sunuvabitch black - and Lou won an Oscar.
46. Jacques Perrin, Les quarantièmes rugissants (UK: The Roaring Forties), France, 1982. Actor-producer Perrin tried Nicholson and Jon Voight. Finally,to keep his costs down, Perrinplayed the UK yachtsman cheating on a round-the-world solo race and killing himself.
47. Albert Finney, Annie, 1982.       Very keen on being Daddy Warbucks.So was Sean Connery.
48. Scott Glenn, Personal Best, 1982.Despitetheirbitter rows during the aborted Two Jakes the year before, writer-director Robert Towne created the UCLAthlethics coach forJack - who politely declined.He had no wish to rate second to Lesbian lovers. And probably didn’t go for his ex-pal Towne’s dialogue: “Who says friendship lasts forever? It wears out like everything else.Like tyres.”
    
    
49. Dennis Hopper, Rumble Fish, 1983.  Iconic director Francis Coppola called him to be father of Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke."I feltmaybe it would be symbolically nice to play the father of this generation of actors - as wild as they are. But... I didn't like the script."And them other Easy Rider needed to continue his Hollywood comeback...
    
50. Darren McGavin, A Christmas Story, 1983.Difficult to imagine Jack in the film thatbegat TV’sWonder Years...
51. James Fox, Anna Pavlova, England-Russia, 1983.  British directing legend Michael Powell had his name cut bythe Kremlin from his final film - about the great Russian ballerina. It took25 years forPowell’s Greek-born producer Frixos Constantine, to find enough money to restorethe filmto its original glory, time (five hours) andcredits as The White Swan in 2008. Powell fan Martin Scorsese first met himat Constantine’sShaftesbury Avenue office in Londonand offered to appear in the film and persuaded De Niro and Nicholson to participate as Anna’s agent andhusband.Moscow banned both for theiranti-Commuinist films (The Deer Hunter) or statements.
52. Michael Douglas, Romancing The Stone, 1985.     Another one Douglas teases him about. With both Nicholson and Clint Eastwood refusing, the producer decided to play it, himself.Again.
53. Jeff Goldblum, Into The Night, 1985."I like it and I like you," he told the (loud) director John Landis. "But this guy doesn't really do anything. The audience likes the leading man to take action."As usual, he was right, although- apparently - none of the 15 directors guesting in the cast were honest enough to say the same to Landis.
    
    
54. Walter Matthau, Pirates, 1985.
    The 1975 project kept bubbling in the early 80s: Nicholson as Cap'n Red, co-starring his director Roman Polanski(instead of Dustin Hoffman)."Jack wanted $4m My producer couldn't live with that. [Actually $1.25m in 1976,  against  10% of the gross] . And I'm glad he said no. I thought it unfair to the other people, me included. I worked on the script so   long. I invented the story and the character that Jack would play. People like Jack get to that stage where they're not interested in what they do, just what they'll get." Sean Penn would hardly agree... William Goldman suggested that casting Matthau was like "doing The Chuck Norris Story with John Candy." The movie s(t)unk like a stone.
    
    
55. Harrison Ford, Witness, 1985.    Loved the script but there was no director attached- or not whenJack was available. So he passed onthe city cop hunting a murder witness in Amish country in what Chicago criticRobert Ebert called “an electrifying and poignant love story hidden in a murder thriller.” It had once been an idea for an episode of US TV’s longest-running series, Gunsmoke, 1955-75.
56. Michael Caine, Hannah And Her Sisters, 1985.It was Caine who revealed that Jack supposed to beMia Farrow’s husband, falling for her sister. (Understandable, she was played by Barbara Hershey).“He would have won the Oscar for it,” said Caine. He should know. He did!
57. Richard Dreyfuss, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, 1986.      Director Paul Mazursky met with “a stoned Nicholson” at his Mulholland Drive home.“Merely sniffing the stuff got me a little high...”Dreyfuss, even higher inhis day, accepted $600,000 for his comeback.
58. Mickey Rourke, Angel Heart, 1986.On reading the script, Rourke described his private dick role as "a tired Nicholson."Jack preferred Terms of Endearment(and asecond Oscar) and he was the devil (De Niro’s role) the following year in The Witchesof Eastwick.
    
    
59. Robert De Niro Angel Heart, 1986.And he was already due to be the devil the following year in The Witchesof Eastwick
60. Gene Hackman, Hoosiers, 1986.Jack loved the notion of being basketball coach Norman Dale but would not be free for a year. Hackman signed on and Dennis Hopper won an Oscar nomination. He was really back!
    
61. Kurt Russell, Big Trouble In Little China, 1986. Once again, the studio (and John Carpenter, if truth be told) preferred Clint or Jack.
    
62. Michael Douglas, Fatal Attraction, 1987.
63. Harrison Ford, Mosquito Coast, 1987.    Australian director Peter Weir and his (obvious) first choice were beached when money went out with the tide in 1984.Of his version, Ford said: "I'm not sure if we cracked it."They hadn't.
64. Michael Douglas, Wall Street, 1987.     Can't you just hear him as Gordon Gekko - Alistair Campbell's personal trainer: "Lunch is for wimps."And: "Greed is right, greed works."Not forgetting: "When I get a hold of the son of a bitch who leaked this, I'm gonna tear his eyeballs out and I'm gonna suck his fucking skull."
65. Kevin Costner, The Untouchables, 1987.Did not want to be as straight asElliott Ness. One LAgent said: “If Jack wanted Canada, some studio boss would buy it, paint it red and park it in his driveway.”
66. Sidney Poitier, Little Nikita, 1988.Conceived, developed at pre-Puttnam Columbia for Jack, the FBI agent became Poitier's first role for a decade. Didn't help Poitier. Nor David Puttnam. Nor Columbia.
67. Jeff Bridges, Tucker: A Man And His Dream, 1988.     When director Francis Coppola first tried to make it in 1977.Thetwo titans have still never worked ensemble.
68. Tom Cruise, Rain Man, 1988.     One Cuckoo was enough. Director Barry Levinson called with the wrong role- Dustin Hoffman’s smart alec brother and minder.
    
    
69. Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988.     Jack was considered for private eye Eddie Valiant. Or, rather for Jake Gittes -writers Jeffrey Price and Peter S Seaman were inspired by Chinatown, 1974.
70. Robert Redford, Havana, 1990.Director Sydney Pollack's first (perfect) choice to partner Jane Fonda in 1978.Judith Rascoe's script was brewing so long, she thought of it as "the corpse that walked - my zombie project."Looked that way on-screen.
    
71. Warren Beatty, Dick Tracy, 1990.     Nicholson had fun (and $60m) from Batman, so why bother with another comic cut? Once Bob Fosse (among others) turned downdirecting,Jack’s buddytook over both jobs.
    
72. Harvey Keitel, Thelma & Louise, 1990.
73. Kevin Costner, Revenge, 1990.     Friends since being introduced by the Missouri Breaks writer Thomas McGuane, novella-ist Jim Harrison first adapted his 1979 Esquire tale for Jack - with JohnHuston, then Jack, himself, directing. Jonathan Demme and Sydney Pollack were also keen on the script which Clint Eastwood snapped up - and then swopped for Bird.
    
74. James Caan, Misery, 1990.All the A Listshied away - from being beaten up by Kathy Bates.
75. Bruce Willis,The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1990.   Instead of Jack, director Brian De Palma paid an action star with no following outside of action films, $5m -that is $4m, more than his main star, Tom Hanks.To play a British journalist!
76. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kindergarten Cop, 1990.     Go figure.
77. John Heard, Home Alone, 1990.      An astonishing 37 stars (Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford,Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, etc) were considered for the forgetful parents - nothing roles in a film written for and duly stolen by the stranded kid, Macauley Culkin.
78. Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs, 1990.
    
79. Harvey Keitel, Thelma & Louise, 1990.
80. Bruce Willis, The Last Boy Scout, 1991.Jack and Mel Gibson proved rather pricey when Shane Black's dicey scenariohad already cost $1.75m.
    
81. Kevin Costner, JFK, 1991.
    
82. James Woods, The Hard Way, 1991.     Director John Badham needed help. He had a scriptthat wouldworkonly with indelibly A-List stars.Hefailed to winany.
    
83. Michael Douglas, Basic Instinct, 1991.
    
84. Sean Connery, Medicine Man, 1992.     For what wascalledRoad Show in 1984.Jack had been Hollywood director Martin Ritt’s choice for the renegade biochemist living deep in the Amazon rain forests, finding - and then losing - a cancer cure.A somewhatKurtzianfigure, being checked up on by the Marlowesque Cher or Mary Steenburgen or Debra Winger - eventually Lorraine Bracco opposite a pig-tailed Connery. Not their finest hour, Critics wereeither 100% for or against the (terrible) John McTiernan movie.
    
    
85. Paul Newman, The Hudsucker Proxy, 1993.
    The Coen brothers' first choice - and their  first refusal. “Sometimes I get flooded with scripts and think: Jesus! If I do all this, I’ll be working until I’m 65. And at that age I’m pretty sure people won’t be that interested in me. I don’t know if I’d be interested.”
    
    
86. John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire, 1993.   No budget could afford Clint and Jack - but what a great idea fromGerman film-maker Wolfgang Petersen.  One of Clint’s finest films.
87. Ben Kingsley, Death and the Maiden, 1994.     Forgetting  his 1985 verbal attack on his pal, director Roman Polanski was now eager to re-match Jack and his ex-lady Anjelica Huston - a coup pulled off tlater that year  by director Sean Penn, masterfully, for The Crossing Guard.
88. Brad Pitt, Legends of the Fall, 1994.Jack Pack stalwart, author and scripter Jim Harrison, had a glass eye and enough girth to be mistaken for Nicholson’s bodyguard. JacksubsidisedHarrison’s writingbut never shotany of his work until Wolfin 1994 - ineffectual yet better than the mid-aged Jack trying to be the young Tristan Ludlow in what both Jim ’n’ Jack felt should havebeen a much grittier Western saga.Anthony Hopkins, who played Pitt’s father, was Jack’s age at the time: 56.
    
89. Anthony Hopkins, The Road To Wellville, 1994.    First reserve if Hopkins changed his mind about being the eccentric inventor of the corn flake, peanut butter and medical instruments to scrub the body inside and out - Dr John Harvey Kellogg.
90. John Malkovich, Mary Reilly, 1995.Four years before, Jack was director-pal Roman Polanski's sole choice as Mary's employer, Dr Henry Jekyll.Impossible just after Wolf...Besides he was moving into to interior roles for actor-director Sean Penn.
    
91. Nick Nolte, Jefferson In Paris, 1995.Hey,a year off means a year off!
    
92. Dennis Hopper, Waterworld, 1995.     As director Kevin Reynolds rushed through the ripest villains, Jack was ruled out.Too expensive - for what proved the most expensive film (then) in history, totaling (with prints and advertising) $200m.Dennis filled in and stole the movie from a waterlogged Kevin Costner. Easily!
    
93. Harvey Keitel, Clockers, 1995.    Martin Scorsese, the director,wanted who else but Robert De Niro as the cop.Then,Scorsese, the producer,wanted Jack. whileSpike Lee, the new director, wanted John Turturro.
    
94. Anthony Hopkins, Nixon, 1995.   Director Oliver Stone had two thoughts only for Tricky Dicky: Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson!    But for  Jack, Jimmy Hoffa was more than enough in the biopic biz... Later  candidates included Tom Hanks, Robin Williams - and poor John Malkovich, stilling chewing over the script when the Welsh outsider was selected. Hopkins was the right age at 58. "He worked on the accent and the gestures," said writer-director Oliver Stone, "and he became Nixon."Almost.
95. Bruce Dern, Mulholland Falls, 1996.    "This isn't America.This is LA..." MGM was alive and well again and asked Jack for a cameo as The Chief.Jack passed - “give it to Dernsie.”
96. Nick Nolte, Mulholland Falls, 1996.    Her passed... while making some dreadful choices: Man Trouble, Blood and Wine, Evening Star, Mars Attacks, etc.
97. Chazz Palminteri, Diabolique, 1996. When Jack preferred another Bob Rafelson trip, the indifferentBlood and Wine,the Warner choices dissipated, like the rotten re-make itself, right down the line to Gabriel Byrne,Jeremy Irons andBig Chazz.
98. John Travolta, Michael, 1996.     Probably the first time anyone who had played the Devil was asked to play an angel - even one who drinks, screws and smells too much!
    
    
99. Robert De Niro, The Fan, 1996.     An obsessive nutter stalking his baseball hero?Obviously more Bob than Jack. Instead, he kept the faith with his pals. Like Bob Evans(as producer, not actor) for TheTwo Jakes, andnow a fourth Bob Rafelson outing: Blood and Wine. Neither one a good vintage.
100. Matthew McConnaughey, Contact, 1997.    The (so-so) film of Carl Sagan’s (better) book did not move him. Everybody andhis wife also had “Jack scripts.”He evenhad a nightmare of his mother coming out of her grave:“Psst! Come here, son, I want you to have a look atthis script.”
     
101. Woody Allen, Deconstructing Harry, 1997.    Woody insisted thatDe Niro, Gould, Hoffman and Nicholsonwere among the many stars telling him: ‘I’m dying to work with you - I’d do anything.’ Except when he offered them Harrry“they’rethey’re not available or they can’t work for the pay I’m offering.”Harry - “always thinking of fucking every womanI meet” - was a slimeball. Not whenWoody played him.
     
102. James Woods, Hercules, 1997.    John Lithgow and Nicholson came, but Woods conqueredall, basically ad-libbing the rapid-fire voice of Hades. And made it a growth industry with various video games.
     
103. Geoffrey Rush,Les Miserables, 1998.Director Roman Polanski was making up to Jacko yet again -offering him Javert, this time.But Danish film-maker Bille August made the literally miserable film.
     
104. John Travolta, Primary Colors, 1998. Jack as his golfing buddy, Bill Clinton? Or the thinly disguised version in Time magazine columnist Joe Klein’s novel, depicting a sex scandal of its own. As Jack said about the Monica Lewinksy episode: “What would be the alternative leadership... somebody who doesn’t want to have sex?”
105. Johnny Depp, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, 1998. One bravura 70s notion had been Nicholson asHunter S Thompson and Marlon Brando as Dr Gonzo.
 "I tell you what," said Depp, "I'd have watched that movie. I'd still be watching it. Nonstop. God, that would have been amazing!" He was forgetting their lamentableMissouri Breaks, 1976.
     
     
106. William Hurt, The Big Brass Ring, 1999.
     

     Orson Welles was trying the impossible in 1976 - to mount a Hollywood movie.  Pal Henry Jaglom was helping. In his 1971 debut, A Safe Place, Jaglom had  directed Jack - and now  asked him to play the gay Texas senator and Presidential hopeful.  Potential investors said Welles needed to get Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds… They all passed. (So did the investors). Jack had no qualms about   playing a closet gay, he simply  refused to lower his $2m salary (it equaled the proposed budget). “I’d charge my mother my fee!” Some 13 years  after Orson’s death,  Missouri auteurGeorge Hickenlooper adapted the 1982-1987 Welles-Oja Kodar scenarios, with Hurt running for governor of Missouri (hah!) and  colliding  into his past… the aged political mentor that Welles reserved for himself.  Criticised for adapting Welles, Hickenlooper said: “Welles in many respects was the Shakespeare of the American cinema. So, if Welles adapted Shakespeare, why not adapt Welles?”

107. Dustin Hoffman, Jeanne d'Arc(US: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Ark), France, 1999.    "I’m glad it wasn’t him," said St. Joan, herself, Milla Jovovich. "He’s an incredible actor but it’s Hoffman I want to work with."
108. George Clooney, Three Kings, 1999.    Helmer David O Russell needed anger management therapy even morethan Nicholson. . And with Jacko aboard,Russell would have landed on his ass more than once - judging by theway he treated Clooney & Co.
     
109. Charlie Sheen, Rated X, TV, 1999.   Before the Estevez brothers made their Showtime version, Sean Penn was due to direct an adaptation of David McCumber’s book about the porn-film-making Mitchell Brothers - starring Nicholson and Robert De Niro asArtie and Jim.Sheen agreed to play Artie as long as his brother, Emilio Estevez, directed and played Jim.
110. Jim Carrey, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, 2000.    Only time Jack was up for the same role as Eddie Murphy.
111. James Garner, Space Cowboys, 2000.    Not even Clint could make Clint and Jack happen!Imagine the concept: Eastwood, Connery, Nicholson.Story? Who cares! Jack had told Clint that The Crossing Guard would be his finale in 1995. “Well, he wenton to act in about ten more movies and I went onto act in or direct six more. They keep saying Yes to you...” Jack, however, said No to, more or less reprising, Garrett Breedlove.
     
112. Tony Goldwyn, The 6th Day, 2000.Too expensive as the villain, given that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the headliner. "With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and seventy."
     
113. Ed Harris, Pollock, 2000.    Harris stuck to his guns and his rights, while throughoutthe 80s everyone saw only Jack as Jackson.From Gerald Ayres, producer of The Last Detail, to Andy Warhol - who cast Jack and Angelica as the alcoholic, manic-depressive painter and his lady Ruth Kligman... without even asking them!
     
114. David Ogden Stiers, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, 2001.    Too priceyfor evenacameo as Zoltan the hypnotist - who can mentionthemagic wordthatturnsWoody Allen’s insurance investigator CW Briggs into a burglar.
115. Ian Holm, The Emperor's New Clothes, 2001.    Jack announced - appropriately in Paris, March 7, 1984 - that he had bought the rights to novelist Simon Leys' novel, The Death of Napoleon, and would direct the film. That was the last heard of it until The Full Monty producer Uberto Pasolini started his version in Italy on September 11, 2000.Nicholsonagreed with the Nitzsche and Shaw's view of Napoleon: "He's the strongest, most unique man Western culture ever produced. And he really knew how to make a comeback!"
116. Robin Williams, One Hour Photo, 2002.     Passed on Sy The Photo Guy,  the ideal employee of every month, secretly obsessed with a young family whose pix he  develops and prints in the tutular store.   Enter: Williams - originally booked for the SavMart manager. Sy is among Williams’ top five roles, worthy of more than horror awards. 
     
117. Albert Finney, Big Fish, 2003.     In the mix way back when Steven Spielberg was planning to film the Daniel Wallace novel.

118. Billy Bob Thornton, Bad Santa, 2003.    Keen. Yet committed  to something better.  Something’s Gotta Give was  written by auteur Nancy Myers for him and the lady he dubbed “Special K” - Diane Keaton. (And her first full frontal nude scene  (at age 57) Also passing on the titular Willie were Larry David and Bill Murray. Jack won his 11th Oscar nomination, surpassing Olivier. His 12th nod for About Schmidt, 2001, placed him one behind Meryl Streep.

119. Kevin Spacey, Superman Returns, 2005.
120. Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 2006.   Probably the most obvious choice during some25 yearsin Development Hell.Other titular casting also included Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas,Harrison Ford, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Al Pacino. Tim Curry was the sole Brit considered and the most lunaticnotions were...Warren Beatty. Harrison Ford andRobert Redford!
     
     
121. Andy Serkis, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, 2009.
     When he first started developing the film in 1984 Spielberg had one idea only for Captain Haddock. And  Nicholson pal Danny De Vito was later booked for Senor Oliveira de Figueira - cut from the finished animation movie shot  in 32 days by Spielberg   March 2009. After which, co-director Peter Jackson supervised the CGI.
     
     
122. Bruce Dern, Nebraska, 2012.Excepting Clooney and Nicholson, Nebraskan director Alexander Payne had a phobia with(some say, an hostility toward) casting stars. Not this time… While flirting with Bryan Cranston, the two Roberts (Duvall and Forster) plus, naturally, Nicholson, Payne was really wooing Hackman back into movies - the perfect crotchety alcoholic who thinks he’s won a sweepstake.But no, retired is what it said! Dernsie said itwas a relief not to be playing “some piece of piece of shit who wants to blow up the Superbowl.” Result: He was voted the 2013 Cannes festival Best Actorby Steven Spielberg’s jury.

123. Jesse Eisenberg, The Double, 2012. Seventeen years earlier,Roman Polanski had great trouble trying to film Dostoievski’s taleof aman faced with his doppleganger and total opposite: confident, charismatic, good with women. (Last made by Bertolucci as Partner, 1968). John Travolta rejected $8m (and Paris) in June 1995. Polanksi offered Nicholson the same package as before: aParis shoot opposite Isabelle Adjani. Anthony Hopkins had no time, AlPacino wasn’t keen, Steve Martin was - but the project collapsed when Adjani stalked followed by Polanski.Jesse (just 12 during this time) finally made it in London for actor-director Richard Ayoade.

     124  >> Bill Murray,  St Vincent, 2013.   Producer-director Theodore Melfi’s first feature owed a bundle to Takeshi Kitanio’s 1989 Cannes festival entry, Kikujirô no natsu (which I always felt Clint Eastwoopd should have re-tooled).  Inevitably, Jack was Theodore-ex-Ted’s initial thought for the tough curmudgeon looking after a neigbour’s lonely son. Surprise, surprise, the grumpy old bastard has a heart of gold. Probably too much so for Jack’s liking. As for (the perfect) Murray, his one-time co-star Tilda Swinton  said he had “a certain rare animal - snow leopard - quality.  Kinda dangerous as well as exotic.”