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 handle the role, saying, "There is James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, and Henry Fonda. After that, who is there but Jack Nicholson?" During the filming, Nicholson struck up what became a lifelong friendship with co-star Garfunkel. When he visited Los Angeles, Garfunkel would stay at Nicholson's home in a room Nicholson jokingly called "the Arthur Garfunkel Suite". Other Nicholson roles included Hal Ashby's "The Last Detail" (1973), with Randy Quaid, for which Nicholson won for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated for his third Oscar and a Golden Globe. Television journalist David Gilmour writes