Hard to believe but the mischievous, scene-stealing star of Easy Rider, Chinatown and Batman turns 80 on 22 April. WILLIAM COOK toasts his career while his One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest co-stars LOUISE FLETCHER and BRAD DOURIF recall a brilliant film actor.Jack Nicholson has spent a lifetime playing wild, seductive mavericks. It has earned him three Academy Awards and a special place among his fellow film makers. So what is it that makes him such a thrilling actor? Nicholson was born in 1937 in New Jersey, the illegitimate child of a teenage mother. He was raised by his grandparents, whom he believed to be his parents (he thought his mother was his big sister). He only learnt the truth as an adult, after his mother died. A bright but rebellious student, he went to Hollywood to become an actor, but it was his writing that got him his big break when in 1966 he wrote a screenplay for a psychedelic film called The Trip, starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. When Fonda and Hopper made Easy Rider, they cast Nicholson in a cameo which made his name and gained him a first Academy Award nomination. The classic 'on the road' shot, with Nicholson riding pillion on Fonda's machine alongside Hopper, was ubiquitous.

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