Stanley Kubrick said Jack Nicholson brought an 'unplayable quality' to his roles

There's a moment in "Terms of Endearment" - the script of which brought Nicholson to tears - when his character, Garrett Breedlove, says to Shirley MacLaine's Aurora Greenway, "You bring out the devil in me." It's unclear if writer/director James L. Brooks intentionally pushed the public's perception of Nicholson as an evil, mischievous guy, but the delivery of the line seems to know. Either way, the actor clearly had something about him reminiscent of Lucifer, as he was going to play Daryl Van Horne, aka the Devil, in 1987's "The Witches of Eastwick."

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While preparing for the role, he was visited by Ron Rosenbaum of The New York Times, who, on his trip to meet the star at his home, noted how Nicholson was immersed in research. The actor, who had looked into Dante's "Hell", Thomas Aquinas, and pondered various thinkers' definitions of evil, apparently told him, "I want people to think that Jack Nicholson is the devil. I want them to worry."

In the presence of such an obvious commitment to the role, Rosenbaum also noted that Nicholson's "The Shining" director Stanley Kubrick "said of Nicholson that he brings to a role the one unplayable quality - great intelligence." And if a famous cerebral director of Kubrick's caliber says it, it obviously means something.