Jack Nicholson

He was 32, writing scripts, and quietly giving up on acting. More than a decade making Roger Corman horror films and biker movies nobody saw had been a thorough education in anonymity. The role of George Hanson in Easy Rider wasn't even supposed to be his. He fell into it sideways. Rip Torn was replaced after a dispute with Hopper, Nicholson stepped in, and got an Oscar nomination for a supporting part in a film he'd come aboard to help produce. Five Easy Pieces the next year proved it wasn't a fluke. Chinatown and Cuckoo's Nest both landed within six years, and the Oscar he took home for the second one was only the first of three. The decade belonged to him because he'd already spent one being ignored.

His last film was How Do You Know in 2010, a box-office flop that quietly ended a 52-year run. He never announced retirement. He just stopped showing up. He lives on Mulholland Drive in a compound that now includes Marlon Brando's old house next door, with a reported $150 million art collection of Picasso and Matisse inside. The public appearances, when they come, are on his terms. He surfaced courtside for a Lakers playoff game and showed up to introduce Adam Sandler at SNL's 50th anniversary. His friend Lou Adler put it simply: he wants to be quiet, eat what he wants, live the life he wants. Most actors fade out. He closed the door himself.

He was 37 when a Time magazine reporter called with a question that unraveled his entire childhood. The whole childhood was a construction. His "sister" June was his biological mother, a teenager who got pregnant and let her parents raise the baby as their own. Both women died before he found out. He's never expressed resentment, and has described them as "strong women," which is either genuine grace or the performance of a lifetime. The rest of his personal life doesn't make it easier to tell which. He married once, in 1962, for six years. He has six children with five different women. The pattern suggests commitment isn't the problem. Boredom is.