Nearly 70, Jack Nicholson Remains True to Himself

"There's a lot of degrees to this monster," he says. "I just wanted to make sure he was obviously corrupt in every area . . . absolute power, corrupt absolutely." In the early days, before he got his big break with "Easy Rider" in 1969, Nicholson used to write screenplays, mostly as a device to create parts for himself. He's still at it in a way, improvising on set and thrusting his character, at least in this case, into further raunch (see: dildo).

"I got to go as far out as I wanted and gave [Scorsese] several hundred different performances, and he wound up picking out a good one," the actor says in the space of a long, casual exhale. And the clash one might expect during a convergence of entrenched masters didn't happen, at least according to Nicholson. It was, he adds, an enjoyable job, "a very, very creative experience. Very different. . . . Marty's a very enthusiastic and supportive director."

It will be hundreds of movie reviews and a decade or so before we know how important "The Departed" is to the Nicholson canon, but the role of Frank Costello does seem a fitting one, for the man and his hour. The actor says he finally took the part because, after three consecutive comedies -- "About Schmidt" in 2002, followed the next year by "Something's Gotta Give" and "Anger Management" -- he was ready for a dramatic endeavor. But there may have been some other attraction to the role of an aging chieftain in constant, violent battle to maintain his eminence. "I haven't needed the money since I took Archie's milk money in the third grade," Costello seethes to an underling. "Tell you the truth I don't need [sex] anymore either, but I like it."

Sex. It is the signature Nicholson leaves on most of his characters, this one to a menacing degree. Costello is not just a mobster, he's a misogynistic mobster who dons leopard print robes, lewdly harasses nuns and interrogates adolescent girls about their menstrual cycles. If the criminal's graphic sexual maneuvers make some viewers queasy, well, that's the idea. "Audiences are very tolerant of murder, but they're not too tolerant of corrupt sexuality," he says.

Nicholson's own storied sexual exploits have been tolerated, even revered, by fans and obsessed over by journalists. "Too much," he claims. "Too much for reality." But in the same minute, he also claims that if he were ever to write an autobiography, it would start with this line: "From the age of 3 or 4 on, life has pretty much been about sexuality . . . but more about that later." Incidentally, it's a book he says will never be written.

Nicholson describes his relations with the opposite sex as a "very positive, symbiotic, positive connection," one he attributes to an upbringing dominated by strong leading ladies. (The actor, who was raised in Neptune, N.J., famously believed his grandmother to be his mother and his real mother to be his sister until an enterprising reporter told him differently in 1974. Both women were dead by then, and the identity of his father, who was not in the picture, has never been confirmed.)

Though he was wed only once -- a five-year marriage in the 1960s to actress Sandra Knight that ended in part, he once said, because "I couldn't take the arguments, they bored me" -- the list of darlings seen on his arm has never stopped growing. Does he have a girlfriend now?

"No. Well, I mean, what do you mean 'girlfriend'? I have a few, uh, I have many long-standing relationships with women," he purrs. "But you mean 'Do I have what they call in high school a "steady girl"? ' Not really."

A classic answer from America's favorite sexagenarian seducer. In truth, what Nicholson says he treasures most now is clarity. "Where there's clarity, there is no choice; where there's choice, there is misery," he chants. It's a line he has used before. The phrase -- actually a quote from the 1968 Monkees' movie "Head," on which Nicholson served as a writer -- was invoked years later when he told longtime love Anjelica Huston that a young actress-model named Rebecca Broussard was carrying his child.

That child, Lorraine, 16, is the one now worrying Nicholson with her position behind the wheel. ("You know she asked me about it," he grunts. "I said, 'Look, don't even ask me. I would love it if you drove a tank.' ") Lorraine and brother Raymond, 14, split time between Broussard and Nicholson, who says his oft-quoted declaration about being "not good at cohabitation" doesn't apply to his progeny. Oldest daughter Jennifer, the result of his marriage to Knight, is in her forties and the mother of two. Son Caleb was born in 1970 to "Five Easy Pieces" co-star Susan Anspach.

Nicholson gushes with affection for his children. "My kids just stun me, ya know?" he says. "They're gorgeous, they're fabulous. . . . They're young, so they're out there punching and jabbing and moving, and it's fun for me."

In fact, the man who made us believe he might murder his wife with an ax in 1980's "The Shining" is said to cry at airport departures of loved ones. If there's one public misconception about him, he says, it's that he's a brute. "I'm not a chump either, but I'm not like an aggressively tough guy," he says. "You know, I'm funny."

Whether he will always be a working actor is a different matter. Nicholson has taken long periods off before and has thought of giving it up altogether. He has appeared in more than 50 films and is indisputably one of the greatest stars of the big screen. Yet he insists the decision to proceed with this career or call it a day is guided by the belief that "nobody cares whether or not you're always going to be an actor or what you're going to do next. You know, they don't -- it's just a thing to talk about."

During those pensive stints, when the thought of a life outside soundstages and makeup chairs has held particular appeal, it comes back, he says, time and again, to this: "Well, look, right now I still like making beautiful things."

And so, six months before 70, Nicholson feels, he says, "glad to be here."

"I think it's amazing that I'm still a movie actor at this age, but that's just good fortune."