Jack Nicholson (movie Icons)
By Douglas Keesey

This title provides visual biographies of cinema's greatest stars. Jack Nicholson was over thirty, and more than a decade into his acting career, when "Easy Rider" finally made him a star. His reputation as a rebellious anti-hero was furthered by three notorious confrontations in films of the 1970s: "Five Easy Pieces", "The Last Detail", and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". He has played villains in "The Shining and Batman", a hot-headed marine colonel in "A Few Good Men", and a ruthless mob boss up to his elbows in blood in "The Departed". As true fans of Jack know, some of his best performances are in less showy roles where his power is conveyed through the subtlety of his acting. Jack has often turned down parts in big moneymakers in order to take riskier roles such as the introverted and grimly brooding men in "Ironweed", "The Crossing Guard", "The Pledge", and "About Schmidt". Jack - "The Wild Man", "The Great Seducer" - is also a very fine actor indeed, and in "Chinatown" he gives what may be his most memorable performance. "The Movie Icon" series: people talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, Taschen shows you. "Movie Icons" is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.