Peter Fonda says his friend Jack Nicholson has retired at 79. (Reuters)
Hollywood superstars do not get bigger than Jack Nicholson.
But after a career stretching more than 60 years featuring a record 12 Oscar nominations, the legendary actor is quitting Tinseltown.
The notorious ladies’ man — famous for his “Here’s Johnny!” line in the psycho horror flick “The Shining” — has been enjoying a quieter life since his last significant film role in 2010’s “How Do You Know.”
Now his long-standing friend and co-star Peter Fonda says the former hellraiser has retired at the age of 79. Peter, who co-starred with Jack in 1969’s “Easy Rider” and has stayed good friends since, said, “I think he is basically retired. I don’t want to speak for him, but he has done a lot of work and he has done very well as a person financially.”
Speaking at the glitzy Bafta Tea Party event in LA, Peter added, “Sometimes people have a reason that you don’t know, and it’s not for me to ask. I don’t call him up and say, ‘Johnny,’ I call him Johnny Hop, ‘What are you doing?’ I would say, ‘How are you, how do you feel?’”
Four years ago reports surfaced in the US claiming Jack was due to wind down his career as a result of memory loss — but the suggestions were shot down by the star’s representatives.
He later admitted that he had decided to scale back his partying, explaining, “I’m still wild at heart but I’ve hit bio-gravity. I can’t hit on women in public anymore. I didn’t decide this. It just doesn’t feel right at my age.”
Fonda believes the offer of a fantastic new role may tempt Nicholson back to a film set, but it would have to be something special to entice him out of retirement.
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