What was Jack Nicholson like on set during production on The Shining? The Shining is a 1977 novel by Stephen King, which saw the Torrance family – consisting of parents Jack and Wendy and their son Danny – move into the isolated Overlook hotel to act as winter caretakers. Jack is a frustrated writer and recovering alcoholic, and soon sinister forces in the hotel work to drive him insane and kill his family. The book was a deeply personal work for King, who was himself dealing with addiction issues while writing the book.

Stanley Kubrick would adapt The Shining book for the big screen in 1980, with the resulting movie often considered one of the best horror film ever made. The initial reception was cold, with the movie receiving mixed reviews and disappointing box-office, but throughout the decades its chilling atmosphere, haunting score and iconic scares have seen it reassessed in a major way. Stephen King remains a vocal critic of the movie, for its major changes to the source material, its detached approach to its main characters and he feels Jack Nicholson was badly miscast.

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For King, the Jack Torrance of the novel was a good man working through his demons, while he thought Jack Nicholson’s take was crazy from his first scene and only got crazier as the movie went forward. While it’s certainly not his most subtle work, Nicholson’s performance in The Shining remains one of his best and features famous line deliveries like “Here’s Johnny!” For as manic and wild as the performance comes across, by all accounts the actor was incredibly pleasant and professional to work with during the long production.

This can be partly seen in Vivian Kubrick’s documentary Making The Shining, which offered a candid look at the production. From brushing his teeth following his lunch break out of consideration for his co-workers, saying hello to crew as he passes through the set or just being accommodating of Vivian Kubrick’s commitment to capturing his every step – including rushing out for a cigarette. The documentary does hint at his irritation over the script being constantly reworked and it shows him working up a frenzy during the scene where Jack hacks down the bathroom door. Other moments show Nicholson marking his script in a technique he learned from Boris Karloff and he was often allowed to improvise by Kubrick.

During the making of The Shining, Jack Nicholson is said to have caught the bulk of his sleep when being driven to and from the set, due to the long filming hours. Given that the movie shot for nearly a year, this might have added to Torrance’s growing mania. The Making The Shining doc also famously captured Stanley Kubrick’s unpleasant treatment of actress Shelly Duvall, as he seemingly set about to antagonize her for the sake of ensuring a stressed performance. In contrast to her fraught relationship with the director, Duvall said she had a great time with Jack Nicholson, and in an interview with Chris Alexander for ComingSoon.net in 2011, she described the actor as her “rock” on the set and they became good friends.

The two often spoke after wrapping for the day’s shoot on The Shining to discuss the next day’s work. Duvall did note that she wanted the Jack and Wendy marriage to come across as happier in the early parts of the story, but Jack Nicholson was against this. He wanted Jack to be cold towards her from the beginning, though a scene where the two hold hands early on came from Shelly Duvall’s suggestion.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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