As Good as It Gets As Good as It Gets As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by James L. Brooks. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic and obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with a chronically ill son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. The screenplay was written by Mark Andrus and Brooks. The paintings were created for the film by New York artist Billy Sullivan. Nicholson and Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, making "As Good As It Gets" the most recent film to win both of
Jack Nicholson but it wasn't what I'd call traumatizing ... I was pretty well psychologically formed". Nicholson grew up in Neptune City, New Jersey. He was raised in his mother's Roman Catholic religion. Before starting high school, his family moved to an apartment in Spring Lake, New Jersey. "When Jack was ready for high school, the family moved once more—this time two miles (three kilometres) farther south to old-money Spring Lake, New Jersey's so-called Irish Riviera, where Ethel May set up her beauty parlor in a rambling duplex at 505 Mercer Avenue." "Nick", as he was known to his high school friends,