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 the past, like Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Cagney". On the set, Nicholson always appeared in character, and if Kubrick felt confident that he knew his lines well enough, he encouraged him to improvise and go beyond the script. For example, Nicholson improvised his now famous "Here's Johnny!" line, along with the scene in which he's sitting at the typewriter and unleashes his anger upon his wife after she discovers he has gone insane when she looks at his writing ("all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed endlessly). There were also extensive takes of scenes, due to