Jack Nicholson has retired from the silver screen, leaving a decorated career that includes a record 12 Academy Award nominations, according to his friend and fellow star Peter Fonda.
Nicholson, 79, was last seen onscreen in the 2010 movie "How Do You Know?" Fonda, who is the son of screen legend Henry Fonda and brother of actress Jane Fonda, made his comments at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Tea Party in Los Angeles, The Sun reported.
"I think he is basically retired. I don't want to speak for him but he has done a lot of work and he has done very well as a person financially," Peter Fonda said. "Sometimes people have a reason that you don't know, and it's not for me to ask.
He added: "I don't call him up and say, 'Johnny,' I call him Johnny Hop, 'What are you doing?' I would say, 'How are you, how do you feel?'"
Fonda and Nicholson have been friends since they costarred in 1969's "Easy Rider." Nicholson received his first Oscar nomination for that role. Nicholson has won three times – as best lead actor for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1976) and "As Good As it Gets" (1998) and for supporting actor in "Terms of Endearment" (1984).
Rumors about Nicholson retiring from Hollywood in 2013 because of memory loss or dementia were rejected by friends, E! News reported. Maria Shriver told E! News then that those rumors were false while another source said he was still actively reviewing scripts forwarded to him.
Nicholson himself shot down the dementia rumors to The Sun in 2013.
"I have a mathematician's brain," the actor said in 2013, per The Sun. "It looks at everything mathematically, including relationships. It's all statistics and laws of probability."
He said in the same interview, though, that he could see a day where he would retire.
"I'm not going to work until the day I die, that's not why I started this," Nicholson told The Sun in 2013. "I mean, I'm not driven. I was driven — but I'm not, I don't have to be out there anymore.
"In fact, there's part of me that never really liked being out there. I learnt how to function within 'out there.' Then you get older, you change. I mean, I'm not a loner, I'm not a recluse, but I don't need all that anymore. I don't enjoy it, simple as that," he continued.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.