Happy Birthday, John Waters and Jack Nicholson

Two edgy and risk-taking entertainers were born on this day, April 22. 

Jack Nicholson excels in roles that mainstream actors would never touch; typically, he starts from a place that is a mile or two from center and moves outward from there.

Nicholson received Oscars for his performances in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Terms of Endearment (1983), and As Good As It Gets (1997). His twelve total nominations tie him with Katharine Hepburn for the second most in history—Meryl Streep leads the industry with fourteen.

There has never been a better character actor; Nicholson’s rage as The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman ("Where does he get those wonderful toys?") is only surpassed by the terror he brings to the screen in such roles as Jack Torrance in The Shining (“Here’s Johnny!”). Nicholson was born on this date in 1937.

John Waters’s filmmaking is unrivalled in the canon of the bizarre; no subject is taboo and no visual too unseemly. It is precisely his irreverence that brings attention to his work. Hairspray (1988; 2007 musical remake) satirizes American family and teen culture, while Pecker (1998) pokes at the critical mechanism at work in the art world. A native of Baltimore, Waters (above) does not hesitate in his films with respect to subject matter, though his Rabelaisian touches would make even Rabelais blush. Waters was born on this date in 1946.

--Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery