All All. Sign In. Brilliant actors. List activity. Marcello Mastroianni. During WW2 he was sent to a German prison camp, but he managed to escape and hide in Venice. He debuted in films as an extra in Marionette , then started working for the Italian department of "Eagle Lion Films" in Rome and joined a drama club, where he was discovered by director Luchino Visconti. In Visconti gave him the starring part in his Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation White Nights and in he was fine as a little thief in Mario Monicelli 's comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street But his real breakthrough came in , when Federico Fellini cast him as an attractive, weary-eyed journalist of the Rome jet-set in La Dolce Vita ; that film was the genesis of his "Latin lover" persona, which Mastroianni himself often denied by accepting parts of passive and sensitive men.
He also appeared as a tired novelist with marital problems in Michelangelo Antonioni 's La Notte , as an impotent young man in Mauro Bolognini 's Bell' Antonio , as an exiled prince in John Boorman 's Leo the Last , as a traitor in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani 's Allonsanfan and as a sensitive homosexual in love with a housewife in Ettore Scola 's A Special Day He died of pancreatic cancer in Jack Nicholson. Actor Producer Writer Chinatown Jack Nicholson, an American actor, producer, director and screenwriter, is a three-time Academy Award winner and twelve-time nominee.
Nicholson is also notable for being one of two actors - the other being Michael Caine - who have received an Oscar nomination in every decade from the '60s through the '00s. Nicholson was born on April 22, , in Neptune, New Jersey. He was raised believing that his grandmother was his mother, and that his mother, June Frances Nicholson, a showgirl, was his older sister.
He discovered the truth in from a Time magazine journalist who was researching a profile on him. His real father is believed to have been either Donald Furcillo, an Italian American showman, or Eddie King Edgar Kirschfeld , born in Latvia and also in show business. His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and a number of Roger Corman films, including The Little Shop of Horrors Nicholson's first turn in the director's chair was for Drive, He Said Before that, he wrote the screenplay for The Trip , and co-wrote Head , a vehicle for The Monkees.
His big break came with Easy Rider and his portrayal of liquor-soaked attorney George Hanson, which earned Nicholson his first Oscar nomination. Nicholson's film career took off in the s with a definitive performance in Five Easy Pieces Nicholson's other notable work during this period includes leading roles in Roman Polanski 's noir masterpiece Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , for which he won his first Best Actor Oscar.
