Jack Nicholson Update: Michael Douglas Says Star, 89, Is ‘Well’ but Has ‘Disappeared’

The latest Jack Nicholson update comes from one of his oldest collaborators, and it is reassuring: the three-time Oscar winner is fine, just largely out of sight. Michael Douglas, who produced Nicholson’s breakthrough-to-legend vehicle “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” said the actor has “disappeared” from public life but remains “well.”

Douglas, 82, made the remarks at an event in Swansea, Wales, while promoting his memoir “One Helluva Ride.” Asked about Nicholson, he said: “I would have liked to have acted with Jack. He’s not working any more. He’s well. He has disappeared. I know that.” He added: “I still see him, but he is fine. He is up there by his house and walking around in his slippers. It happens. He deserves it. I understand. He is a few years older than me, but I understand.”

A Friendship Built Behind the Camera

The two men have never appeared on screen together, a fact Douglas openly regrets. Their connection dates to the mid-1970s, when Douglas produced “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the 1975 film in which Nicholson played Randle McMurphy. According to The Independent, Douglas acquired the rights to Ken Kesey’s novel from his father, Kirk Douglas, who had previously held them. The film won five of its nine Oscar nominations, including best picture and best actor for Nicholson, and earned Douglas an Academy Award as producer.

Why Nicholson’s Silence Has Drawn So Much Attention

Nicholson, 89, has never formally announced his retirement. His last film role was in 2010’s “How Do You Know,” some 16 years ago. For an actor once seen at nightclubs, premieres, talk shows and courtside at basketball games, the withdrawal has been conspicuous. The Independent noted that music producer Lou Adler once said on the “WTF” podcast that Nicholson prefers “sitting under a tree and reading a book.” Actor Carol Kane, who worked with him in the early 1970s, told the paper in 2024 that she still checks in on him, and that he is “still answering my calls.”

Douglas’s portrait of an elder statesman enjoying a quiet life fits a pattern of glimpses over the past couple of years. Nicholson has made only occasional appearances at Los Angeles Lakers games. In February 2025, he turned up on the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary special on NBC, attending with his daughter Lorraine and introducing Adam Sandler, as he had done a decade earlier at the show’s 40th. That remains his last known public appearance.

This April, Lorraine posted a rare photo to her Instagram story marking his 89th birthday. It showed him smiling and clapping beside singer Joni Mitchell. She did not say when it was taken.

What the Latest Jack Nicholson Update Does and Doesn’t Tell Us

Douglas offered no medical details and no hint of a comeback, and his comments should be read as a friend’s reassurance rather than an official statement. But the tone is notable. Rather than lament Nicholson’s absence, Douglas framed it as earned. With Nicholson due to turn 90 next April, the message from a man who has known him for half a century is that the star has chosen a private life and appears content with it.

Douglas’s memoir, meanwhile, has been drawing attention for its candid recollections of his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones and of past relationships. It is his own legacy project, he has said, but as this Jack Nicholson update shows, it is also prompting questions about the old friends and collaborators who shaped his career.

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File photo: Jack Nicholson.0911.jpg by Franz Richter (User:FRZ), CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.