Jack of Hearts

Her

e's the thing about Jack Nicholson: some women really like him, and other women can't stand him. Fortunately he can tell the difference: "I know when I got these four or five girls standing around me, talking to me, and, you know, it's nice — I know the one that flat-out hates me. You know what I mean? The one that's never gonna like one thing I ever do. And because I know, it becomes clear to me when I'm going to confront this to my greatest advantage. So it's always a great delight to me when, in all candor, I can turn to a person of this nature — who probably hasn't even seen the picture, and already she doesn't like it — when I can turn to her and say, 'You know, I'm not working now, so I can be very honest with you: I don't give a f___ what you think!'" Pause for effect. "This will really galvanize a conversation."

Yes, it will. And here's something else to talk about: Nicholson's new movie, Something's Gotta Give, is a chick flick about as unapologetic as they come. Can Jack, the unrepentant seducer, the legendary monster of appetites, the roguish charmer, turn himself into the king of hearts? Or put another way, would you buy from this man an unblushing, sentimental, picnics-on-the-beach romantic comedy about the joys of committed love?

LATEST COVER STORY Mind & Body Happiness Jan. 17, 2004 Past Issues Tsunami Jan. 10, 2004 ----------------- Person of the Year Jan. 3, 2004 ----------------- Secrets of the Nativity Dec. 13, 2004 ----------------- The Stealth Killer Dec. 6, 2004 ----------------- Coolest Inventions Nov. 29, 2004 ----------------- Battle for Fallujah Nov. 22, 2004 ----------------- Four More Years Nov. 15, 2004 ----------------- The Joy Of Sox Nov. 8, 2004 ----------------- The Morning After Nov. 1, 2004 ----------------- The God Gene Oct. 25, 2004 ----------------- The Vote Battle Oct. 18, 2004 ----------------- Visions of Tomorrow Oct. 11, 2004 ----------------- The Tragedy of Sudan Oct. 4, 2004 ----------------- CBS Controversy Sept. 27, 2004 ----------------- America's Border Sept. 20, 2004 ----------------- Struggle Within Islam Sept. 13, 2004 ----------------- World of George Bush Sept. 6, 2004 -----------------   SPECIAL REPORTS  Coolest Video Games 2004  Coolest Inventions  Wireless Society  Cool Tech 2004 PHOTOS AND GRAPHICS  At The Epicenter  Paths to Pleasure  Quotes of the Week  This Week's Gadget  Cartoons of the Week More graphics >> More photos >> MORE STORIES Advisor: Rove Warrior The Bushes: Family Dynasty Klein: Benneton Ad Presidency More Stories >> CNN.com: Latest News

He still looks good at 66, though his face is fleshier and squarer and seems on pace to merge completely with his neck sometime around 2008. But it's still a face made for actingall punctuation marks, from those pointy circumflex eyebrows to the profound parentheses on either side of his mouth. Lounging in his favorite suite at a New York City hotel, Nicholson sits in an armchair and drinks coffee and smokes Camel Lights. After a weekend of interviews, his lilting, comforting-yet-unnerving voice is shot to the point that it's just a husky growl, but Nicholson is a talker, and when he wants to talk, by God, he's going to talk.

Nicholson has made a point of defying expectations lately — his physical transformation into a stoop-shouldered loser retiree in last year's About Schmidt earned him his 12th Oscar nomination, and a goofball turn opposite Adam Sandler in Anger Management showed that he can mix it up with the most sophomoric. But Something's Gotta Give, which opens on Dec. 12, reads like an attempt to completely dismantle his public persona: he spends the first half of the movie playing directly to type and the second half dead set against it. Nicholson plays Harry Sanborn, 63, a rich, unmarried and devilishly charming Manhattan businessman who dates only women under 30. One weekend Harry scampers off with his girlfriend — played by the lively Amanda Peet (in reality, an over-the-hill 31) — to her mother's beach house, only to keel over with a heart attack as soon as the fun starts. His girlfriend promptly scampers back to the city, leaving him in the care of her divorced mom Erica (Diane Keaton), a tough-minded, successful playwright with no patience whatsoever for Harry and his boyish high jinks. But as the two are forced into each other's company, Harry sheds his lifelong bias against older women and Erica her carefully constructed emotional barriers. It's a December-December romance.

Director Nancy Meyers wrote the film with Nicholson in mind. "I haven't really seen him fall in love onscreen," says Meyers. "It was that part I wanted to see. I wanted to see Jack Nicholson fall in love with a middle-aged woman." At first blush, it feels like a piece of grotesque miscasting. After all, this is a man whose last serious girlfriend was Lara Flynn Boyle, a woman 33 years his junior. This is a man who has four children by three actresses, none of whom he is currently married to, and whose house sits on a hill near Marlon Brando's and Warren Beatty's. "I kind of squirm under sentiment," Nicholson admits, and he squirms visibly as he says it. "I've always been kind of a wisecracker and a deflector."

Granted, yes, it's totally unfair to saddle the character with the sins of an actor. It's something Nicholson has been dealing with his whole life — in part, as he's not slow to point out, because of the way his disarming ease onscreen fools audiences into thinking he's not acting at all. "It's a double-edged sword," he says. "They always say it's just like me. Always. And that's the best compliment. It's the most subtle compliment. When an audience says, 'Oooh, that's Jack, that's what he's really like,' you don't really want to hear it, but you've succeeded." Keaton — who has known Nicholson for more than 20 years, since they worked together in Reds — is more vehement in his defense. "Philosophically it's very different from many of the movies that he's been in," she says, "by nature of the fact that he's dating a woman who is his contemporary, which he may not do in his life, but who cares about his life? And I hope he has a great one, and if he dates a 25-year-old, it's not my business."