Michael Douglas says his longtime friend Jack Nicholson has largely stepped away from public life, though he is doing well.
Douglas, 82, spoke about his career and the roles he never got to play while discussing his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride.” Asked which actor he wished he had worked with, he said he would have liked to act alongside Nicholson.
“He’s not working anymore. He’s well,” Douglas said, adding that Nicholson had “disappeared” from view. “I still see him, but he’s fine. He’s up there by his house, walking around in his slippers. It happens. He deserves it. I understand. He’s a few years older than me, but I understand.”
Nicholson, 89, is seldom seen in public. His last credited film role was in 2010’s “How Do You Know.”
His name came up recently when Crystal Hefner recalled the celebrity visitors to the Playboy Mansion. On her podcast, she said some guests were curious, while others treated the Holmby Hills property like a private country club. Nicholson, she said, was such a regular that people once called the place “Jack Nicholson’s drive-thru”: he would stop for food or something else, then head out.
Nicholson’s daughter, Lorraine, has also written about spending time at the mansion as a child, playing with Hefner’s sons, Marston and Cooper. She said people often assumed her father took her there, but she believed she had actually spent more time at the mansion than he had.
In an essay about growing up with well-known parents, Lorraine recalled that some of her friends’ parents were reluctant to let their children visit the Nicholson home. The Hefners, she suggested, may have felt reassured that her father could come and go from the mansion without an invitation. He was already on the list, she wrote.
Crystal said fame mattered greatly to her late husband. Celebrity guests were treated especially well, she recalled, and Hefner spent time with visitors including Bill Maher, Motown founder Berry Gordy and astronaut Buzz Aldrin. She said she felt more comfortable around celebrities who were not womanizers.
Crystal began dating Hefner at 21. They became engaged in 2010, when she was 24 and he was 84, but called off their wedding shortly before the ceremony the following year. They later reconciled, married in 2012 and remained together until Hefner died in 2017 at age 91.
During his final years, Crystal said, she tried to treat him with respect and preserve his sense that he was valued. She described the mansion as a place organized around his needs, and recalled him becoming emotional during romantic scenes in old movies. Sometimes, she said, she wondered whether the tears were genuine or meant to make her believe his feelings were real. Either way, she would wipe them away and feel sad, too.
