Table of contents for Jack Nicholson in Jack Nicholson

THE PART: The appearance of George Hanson in Easy Rider may be relatively brief, but he is easily the most memorable character in the entire film. George is a smooth-talking, alcoholic lawyer who meets Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) when they are thrown in jail in New Mexico. An eccentric man from a traditional Southern family, he finds, to his surprise, that he enjoys the company of his hippie friends right from the start, and even joins them on their drive to New Orleans for Mardi Gras after helping get them out of jail. George looks like a classic misfit, dressed more like a lawyer than a hippie and famously wearing a football helmet while riding on the back of a motorcycle. But he is blissfully content in…

THE PART: Straight out of DC Comics, the Joker is one of the classic, archnemesis villains in the Batman series. He is as famous for his colorful suits (purple jacket and orange shirt in this case) as he is for his clown makeup (white with a huge, red outline around the lips, turned up at the corners for a permanent smile). He is also comically evil. Jack Napier, as he was known before he became the Joker, is a brilliant but unstable child who turns to a life of crime. At a young age, he mugs the parents of Bruce Wayne—Batman’s alter ego—and kills them in an alley in Gotham City. He nearly kills young Bruce, too, but lets him live at the urging of his partner. Later, Jack joins…

THE PART: On the surface, Bobby is a blue-collar, lower-middle class American man who bounces from job to job on oil rigs in California. His girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black), is a waitress who dreams of being a country singer. Bobby’s interests are simple—he likes to drink and bowl. But beneath the surface, hidden from his friends, Bobby is a classical pianist—or at least he had been as a child, until he decided to leave his family and his elitist roots behind to make it on his own. He is forced to return to his family years later, after learning that his estranged father is dying. This all happens at the urging of his sister, who demands that he return to his family’s island home in Washington state to reconcile before…

THE PART: At first, Jack Torrance simply appears to be a troubled man—a writer and teacher with an alcohol problem and a dangerously volatile temper. He wants to be a good person, but his anger issues cause him to lose his job and have him on the brink of destroying his family as well. He gets a second chance after a drunk driving scare, when he accepts a position as the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in an isolated part of the Colorado Rockies during the winter. He brings his family along, in the hopes that he can put everything back together. But the supernatural forces of the Overlook Hotel, coupled with the deep memories Jack has of his own abusive father, are too much for him to overcome. Little…

THE PART: Colonel Jessup is the commanding officer at the U.S. Marine base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he is all Marine, through and through. He is tough and disciplined, and insists on absolute obedience to orders from the Marines under his command. His ways go awry when a young private, William Santiago, asks to be transferred off the base. Rather than grant the request, Col. Jessup doubles down on Santiago’s training and orders a “Code Red”—a physical hazing and punishment to be carried out by his fellow Marines. But the two men administering the Code Red go too far and Santiago is accidentally killed. Col. Jessup covers up the crime, gets rid of evidence, and falsifies documents to protect his own reputation and the men under his command. It’s…

THE PART: J.J. “Jake” Gittes is a private investigator in Los Angeles in the late 1930s who is unwittingly drawn into a murder mystery and a political scandal centered around the struggle to control the city’s water supply. His adventure begins when he is hired by a woman pretending to be Evelyn Mulwray to investigate her husband, whom she believes is having an affair. Gittes photographs him with another woman, and when the pictures end up in the newspaper, he’s confronted by the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). Evelyn’s husband is then murdered, and Gittes launches an investigation into his death. As he does, he learns that the water department in Los Angeles is purposely drying up land so it can later be bought cheaply. Gittes is a hard-nosed, tough,…

THE PART: Melvin is a quirky, eccentric, socially inept, unfiltered, bigoted, best-selling romance novelist who is afflicted with a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He lives in a luxury apartment in New York City, he is unsurprisingly single, and he hates almost all of his neighbors, whom he considers to be idiots. The only one he seemingly takes a liking to—eventually—is his gay neighbor, Simon. After Simon is nearly killed during a robbery, Melvin even agrees to take care of Simon’s dog. Melvin also has an apparent crush on Carol, a waitress at a local restaurant where he often goes—and where he terrorizes and abuses most of the rest of the staff. Carol has an odd fascination with him, too, which her coworkers do not understand. His friendship with Carol causes…