From a reader

I’m friends with a publicist who has dealt with a wide variety of celebrities throughout her career.

A few years ago, she and other veteran publicists were sharing their war stories on a closed Facebook group to which I was invited.

There was one publicist, in particular, who told a story that was especially memorable.

When this publicist was a young woman in the 1970s, she landed a job with a movie studio. For one of her first assignments, she was sent to New York City to help out with the campaign of a major motion picture starring a permanent A list mostly movie actor who is an Oscar winner/nominee.

Part of her job was to accompany him on the media tour, which would begin in New York City.

On the first day of the press tour, she was to fetch him from his hotel room and then accompany him to various outlets where he would plug this movie.

As the publicist recounted, she knocked on his door, expecting that he would be ready.

Mind you, he KNEW she was coming at that time because he had to be ready, according to the schedule.

So what happens?

He opens the door with a big smile and he’s stark naked.

Yep.

Not a stitch of clothing.

The publicist might have been a young woman back then but she was no pushover.

She yelled at him to put on his goddamned clothes while she waited outside.

He did.

He never did that to her again.

Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson once spent three months naked in order to prepare for a new role

Ever the method actor, journalist Erik Hedegaard wrote in a Rolling Stone feature: “In the late sixties, as a matter of self-help, he spent three months walking around in the nude, at all hours of the day, no matter who stopped by, his daughter included,” a strong move. Apparently, the naturist experiment was designed to help Nicholson get over his body self-consciousness ahead of a pivotal s.ex scene he was due to play in a then-upcoming film.

“I felt it was totally necessary,” Nicholson explained later in the same feature. “I’m self-conscious about body image. I don’t have a great body shot. And it was an era of ‘Let’s get free.’ I know it drove my oldest daughter insane. I just wanted to be more relaxed within my skin. But it didn’t totally resolve all that, like many experiments you think you’ve concluded on yourself but you haven’t really.”

Shortly after that three months of long naked summer days, Nicholson began working on his direction debut Drive, He Said in the early 1970s. The film became controversial for its depictions of se.x and drug use and male frontal nudity. According to a biography about Nicholson entitled Five Easy Decades, during Nicholson’s naked three month period, the actor would be happy to arrange meetings at his home with producer Roger Corman yet still refuse to wear any clothing — a move which could have quite easily influenced the film.

“The book reports that in the early ’70s, Jack became obsessed with nudity. He even sat buck naked for interviews for the movie ‘Drive, He Said,’” the biography states.- Source

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