MacLaine really wants Jack Nicholson back
She’s sending the actor ‘every script’ she gets
MALIBU, CALIF.— Paging Jack Nicholson. Shirley MacLaine needs to work with you again. It’s in the stars.
After all, 1983’s Terms of Endearment made movie magic, with MacLaine and Nicholson propelling the movie to a best picture win at the Academy Awards.
She won best actress for her role as uptight Aurora Greenway, and he nabbed supporting actor as aging Lothario astronaut Garrett Breedlove. It played out as an oddball relationship for the ages, with immortal screen chemistry.
MacLaine, who plays a control freak cut from the same cloth as Greenway in The Last Word (opens March 10 in Toronto), says she’d love to be back onscreen with Jack.
“I call him with every script I get and say, ‘Come on.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, Shirl, I’m sitting on my porch, I’m enjoying myself. Call again,’ ” says MacLaine, going into a slight Nicholson drawl.“I don’t care what it is, I would do anything with him,” MacLaine says.
She’s happy that Nicholson is slated to return to acting with an American remake of the German comedy Toni Erdmann, his first film role since 2010’s How Do You Know.
“I should read the script to see if there’s a part in it,” MacLaine says. “Even if it’s just an extra.”
As for filming Terms with director James L. Brooks, MacLaine says the famed scene where Nicholson kisses her in the water was planned.
Nicholson’s decision to then put his hand down her dress was not. “When he put his hand on my boob, I thought, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” says MacLaine, whose reaction was appropriately powerful. “All of that was improvised.” She’s less forthcoming about discussing her relationship with the legendary mother-daughter team of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, who died a day apart in December. But she does say she wasn’t surprised that they died so close together.
“Not at all,” says MacLaine. “Debbie could not be without Carrie and Carrie was the leader in what the next act was in their lives. Even if it meant, ‘I’m dying. And Mother, you’re coming with me.’ ”