Ray Nicholson Opens Up About His Fear of Disappointing Jack
Their Bond Centers Around Sports and the Lakers
Ray’s Path to Acting After a Life-Changing Injury
Jack Nicholson’s Support for Ray’s Individual Path
Ray Nicholson has never had an easy time talking to his father about much. In a conversation with his sister for Interview Magazine, published November 11, the actor said one subject has always worked between him and Jack Nicholson: sports. Telling his father he wanted to act was a different matter. E! Online reported on the interview, where Ray put it plainly: “I was really scared to tell dad.”
Ray Nicholson Opens Up About His Fear of Disappointing Jack
Jack Nicholson, now 89, is the Chinatown star who has kept a low profile in recent years since retiring from acting, according to E! Online. His son Ray, whose mother is Jack’s ex Rebecca Broussard, has since built his own credits, including Smile 2 and Mosquito Bowl.
Ray Nicholson still described the conversation as something he dreaded.
Sons of famous men usually get asked whether the name opened doors. Fewer get asked whether it made one particular conversation at the kitchen table terrifying. Acting was the family business. Choosing it meant walking straight into the one arena where his father had nothing left to prove and he had everything.
Their Bond Centers Around Sports and the Lakers
Ray told his sister that sports are the language of love he and his dad share. He also said there is a lot the two of them cannot talk about. The Lakers, on the other hand, they could discuss endlessly, in his words until kingdom come.
High school football gave them plenty of material. Ray played. The games gave father and son a ready-made topic that required no confessions from either side.
Plenty of families run on exactly this arrangement. Scores, trades, a bad call in the fourth quarter. Real feeling travels through the box score because saying it outright feels too exposed. Ray did not frame it as a complaint. He framed it as love, just routed through a basketball team.
Ray’s Path to Acting After a Life-Changing Injury
His final high school football game ended with an injury and a staph infection. According to E! Online, that stretch made Ray realize that playing football in college was not the future he wanted. He described it as a voice-of-god moment, an inner voice telling him he wanted to be an actor instead.
USC came next. Ray said film school taught him to love every part of filmmaking. It also gave him a sentence about his father he seems to have needed: that dad is not god, and not the only thing in the film industry.
He went further, calling Jack a beautiful part of the business but a very small one. Making his father proud is high on his list, he said. Acting, though, is how he is figuring out who he is. For now, he told his sister, he feels on the right path.
Shrinking a legend to life size is not an insult. For a son, it is the only way to stand next to him.
Jack Nicholson’s Support for Ray’s Individual Path
Jack seemed to see this coming years ago. In a 2008 interview with AARP Magazine, cited by E! Online, he said Ray might not always share what he is up to. Once his son set his mind on something, Jack added, he would stick with it no matter what his father or anyone else said.
Read now, that reads less like a complaint and more like permission given in advance. Ray Nicholson was scared to tell his father he wanted to act.
Neither has said how that talk about acting actually went. What Ray did say is that the Lakers are still on the table.
