(Credits: Far Out / Paramount Pictures)
Sun 18 January 2026 17:45, UK
Throughout cultural history, a cycle has played out over and over, and over: drugs appear glamourous, and drugs destroy. There is really no separating the artistic world from the world of illicit substances, but the latter continues to do so much damage, as Jack Nicholson has both been part of and seen firsthand.
Nicholson was a major player of the 1960s, so of course, he took drugs; you don’t star in Easy Rider without being locked into the turn on, tune in, drop out scene, or date one of The Mamas and the Papas unless you’re spending a decent amount of time high as a kite, and you definitely don’t wind up being long-term friends with Hunter S Thompson if you’re not matching him, line for line, in his insane habit.
Nicholson was a mainstay in the party scene, well into the 1970s, the ‘80s, the ‘90s, and even in the early 2000s, when he was romantically linked to the next generation of party girls, like Kate Moss, but the fact is that for anyone on that scene, they’re going to witness the tragedy drug abuse can sow. Everyone lost friends, everyone witnessed incredible talents burn out, and everyone was forced to face up to the destruction. For Nicholson, there were several occasions when the confrontation of the danger of drugs hit hard, and the death of Heath Ledger was one of them.
Nicholson said after the star’s death that he had “warned him”, attempting to step in as he noticed Ledger beginning to spiral, but throughout his time, especially in the wild days of his youth, he saw that old pattern play out on repeat. That’s why, when Tom Sizemore came begging for money, gripped by his own addiction, the man refused to be a part of it.
Sizemore was a lot younger than Nicholson, only born in 1961 by the time his older peer was already at work, but the two shared a natural inclination towards hedonism, and for the former, it led to an early fall into drugs, and by the time he was 15, he was already an addict. It’s really a wonder he even managed to get a career off the ground, given the grip addiction had on him, yet somehow, the actor starred in several truly iconic films, like Saving Private Ryan, Natural Born Killers, True Romance, Heat and more. Throughout his career, he starred alongside big names like Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, but all the while, he was struggling.
So few people get out of that sort of situation without it getting seriously dark, and for Sizemore, that moment came in 2009 when he truly hit was he saw as his rockbottom, wherein, despite his impressive accolades, he was broke and lost.
“I wasn’t homeless, but I had to fast sell my $7million house. This is how fucked up I was,” he admitted to the Daily Mail, recalling how he was living in a squat or even just driving round in his car, hatching an insane plan.
“I was thinking I’m gonna get the money to buy a $5million home, and I’m asking certain people for money,” he said as he started dropping in on famous friends, asking for loans, “I asked Jack Nicholson, ‘Can you loan me $10million’,”to which the actor replied, “In a word, no”.
Absolutely no one was going to give an addict on that scale more money to likely end up splashing out on more drugs, and even fewer people would be stupid enough to ever believe that it would be a loan that would be repaid, but for Nicholson, having seen so much death and having only recently cut drugs out of his own life, him saying no to Sizemore was his attempt to help him.
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