Jack Nicholson: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Jack Torrance - The Shining

What to say of Jack's nerve-wrenching performance as writer turned psychopath Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's seminal horror movie that hasn't been said already? Indeed, the image of Nicholson peering through an axe-damaged doorway has become so iconic that it's fallen in the realms of parody more times than we can count.

Still, Nicholson's dedication to his role in this novel adaptation marks one of his all-time best performances. Even if it is a little on the hammy side, somehow he makes the transition work - it's a tour de force in crazy. Stephen King famously said that Nicholson was wrong for the lead role, and from an adaptation point of view, he'd be right: the original source material had Jack Torrance as a regular guy before going apesh*t, thus emphasising the contrast between the two men.

Nicholson, King argued, seemed crazy from the very beginning, thus dulling the impact. It's a fair enough point, but it's also probably true that without Nicholson's unnerving performance at the centre, filling the movie with anxious dread, it would have been a far less interesting flick on the whole.