Jack Nicholson looked jovial in a new snap posted by his daughter to mark his 89th birthday on Wednesday.
Longtime pal Joni Mitchell, 82, can be seen sitting with Nicholson on a sofa as the pair appear to clap along and smile at a subject offscreen. The iconic actor, who retired in 2013, was last seen publicly at Saturday Night Live‘s SNL50 event in February. Prior to that appearance, he had not been seen for two years.
Mitchell, who also stepped away from the spotlight in her golden years, has appeared more frequently than Nicholson but still remains a rare sight. The legendary folk singer appeared at the Juno Awards in Canada last month to accept her lifetime achievement award, where she took the opportunity to slam Donald Trump.
Before that, Mitchell was last seen performing for the first time at the 2024 Grammy Awards at 80 years old.
The sweet snap of the pair, who were known for enjoying their party days together in decades past, was posted by Nicholson’s daughter, Lorraine Nicholson, 36. Jack Nicholson has six children from five different relationships, including Lorraine, Ray, Tessa, Jennifer, Caleb, and Honey.
The old friends were frequently photographed together throughout the 1970s and 1980s and have enjoyed a long friendship that sometimes drew speculation about romantic involvement, though it was never fully confirmed. The pair certainly enjoyed platonic adventures, some outlandish, one of which Mitchell details in her song, “People’s Parties,” about an outing with Nicholson and his then girlfriend, Anjelica Huston.
According to Huston’s memoir, Watch Me, via Paper, the song was inspired by a party at which Nicholson was found to have had a fling with popular Dutch model Apollonia van Ravenstein, a friend of Huston’s who was also in attendance.
The resulting meltdown, during which Huston wrote van Ravenstein put a lampshade on her head and laughed and cried at the same time, inspired Mitchell’s lyrics, “Photo beauty gets attention/ Then her eye paint’s running down/ She’s got a rose in her teeth/ And a lampshade crown/ One minute she’s so happy/ Then she’s crying on someone’s knee/ Saying laughing and crying / You know it’s the same release.”
The octogenarians likely aren’t getting into the same kind of trouble anymore, but according to the new photo, they are still having a good time.
