From 1989 to 1994 Nicholson had a relationship with actress Rebecca Broussard; they had two children together: daughter Lorraine (born April 16, 1990) and son Raymond (born February 20, 1992).
April 1994
A year ago last September, Rebecca Broussard, the 31-year-old blonde knockout who mothered Nicholson’s two youngest children, up and quit him after six years. He’d finished The Two Jakes, Man Trouble, A Few Good Men, and the eight-month grind of Hoffa. The news hit him like a right hook to the heart. The rumor went that the young actress had left Nicholson for a younger guy. But Jack doesn’t know and frankly, doesn’t care.
“It’s the hardest lesson,” he says, returning to Rebecca. “You’re left. You’re abandoned. And you’re not going to be over it for another year—whatever the fuck you do. . . they do. . . she do. If it takes that long, I’m willing. I don’t think I got the time, but I’m willing to do the time. I’m going to give my need the time.”
Is he still in love with Rebecca, whose pregnancy caused Anjelica Huston, who shared Nicholson’s life for 17 years, to finally throw in the towel? “Of course,” he wails. “I’m still in love with all the women I ever loved.” And, no, he’s not sorry he trusted Rebecca. “I trusted her too much. I’d trust again too much tomorrow night because I like her. She’s great.”
Rebecca Broussard hesitates when I ask her about Jack. This is the first and last time she’s going to discuss what happened. But she’s got a few things to clear up. “After I had my kids, I changed,” Rebecca tells me. There is another man now, a 31-year-old-actor. “He is a very important person in my life.” But she says he wasn’t the catalyst for the breakup. “He has nothing to do with Jack and my reality.”
hough he and Broussard are no longer an item, they’re not strangers. “We have a relationship,” he says, “because of the children, but we have no other relationship.” The children are Lorraine, almost four, and two-year-old Ray (“My man Ray,” says a beaming Nicholson, who is cuckoo about the kid). They travel easily between Jack’s house and Rebecca’s place—the one Jack bought for her after Lorraine was born—10 minutes away.
Lorraine Smith, who helped raise Jack, remembers when he showed up on her doorstep in Neptune City, New Jersey, with Rebecca on his arm. “They’d been in Europe,” Lorraine recalls. “She was three months pregnant with Ray and I’d never seen Jack happier. She couldn’t take her eyes off him and he seemed to be younger, more carefree, loving.”