Jack Nicholson screen characters, someone who is "snarly, dumb, smart, noble, rascally—all the parts of 'Jack'" Nicholson went on to win his next Academy Award for Best Actor in the romantic comedy, "As Good as It Gets" (1997), his third film directed by James L. Brooks. He played Melvin Udall, a "wickedly funny", mean-spirited, obsessive-compulsive novelist. "I'm a studio Method actor", he said. "So I was prone to give some kind of clinical presentation of the disorder." His Oscar was matched with the Academy Award for Best Actress for Helen Hunt, who played a Manhattan wisecracking, single-mother waitress drawn into a love/hate
Jack Nicholson movie's soundtrack. After a spot opened up in Fonda and Hopper's "Easy Rider" (1969), it led to his first big acting break. Nicholson played hard-drinking lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. The film cost only $400,000 to make, and became a blockbuster, grossing $40 million. Biographer John Parker states that Nicholson's interpretation of his role placed him in the company of earlier "anti-hero" actors, such as James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, while promoting him into an "overnight number-one hero of the counter-culture movement". The part was a lucky break for Nicholson—the role had been written