Ray Nicholson walked into the world premiere of his new film, The Mosquito Bowl, at the AFI Film Festival in Hollywood on October 22 carrying the same face that has been greeting moviegoers since Easy Rider. He is 34, he is Jack Nicholson’s youngest acknowledged son, and for years that famous face was the hardest part of his job. “It’s so hard,” he told People when asked about measuring himself against his father.
What has changed is how Ray talks about it now. He has made peace with the comparison, and he shared one piece of feedback from Jack, now 89, that he calls his favorite thing his father has ever said about his work. To understand why those words matter so much, you have to go back to the boy who never wanted to act at all.
Why Did Ray Nicholson Fight So Hard Against Acting?
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Ray was born on February 20, 1992, in Los Angeles, the second child of Jack and actress Rebecca Broussard. Broussard, who was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and played Gladys in Jack’s 1990 film The Two Jakes, was with Nicholson from 1989 to 1994, and the couple’s daughter Lorraine arrived in 1990. Ray has always given his mother equal billing. She came from “a trailer park in Henderson, Kentucky,” he told USA Today in 2025, and she “taught me how to be a human and how to have a heart.” He jokes that she also gave him his “nice teeth, good manners, blue eyes and curly hair.”
The acting part came from the other side of the family, and for a long time he resisted it. He called acting “the absolute last thing that I wanted to do” in that same interview, describing himself as a “really insecure kid” who wanted to hide. If he hadn’t been so afraid of being compared to his dad, he said, “I would’ve been a veterinarian.”
Yet he grew up studying the man anyway. “I ate dinner with him every night. I studied it, that’s how I learned to be a human being,” Ray told Deadline at the Smile 2 premiere in October 2024, as reported by People. “He’s also my hero. I’m the luckiest kid in the world.” That dinner table turned out to be the best acting class he ever had, though it took him years to admit it.
How Ray Nicholson Finally Made His Own Name
Ray worked his way up through small parts rather than leaning on his last name. He played Jim in Promising Young Woman in 2020, turned up in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza in 2021 and carried 10 episodes of the Amazon series Panic the same year. The breakout came in 2024 with Smile 2, where his role as Paul Hudson required a slow, sinister grin that sent audiences straight back to Jack in The Shining. Plenty of viewers noticed, and Ray didn’t argue. “Well, our faces do look alike. We’re related,” he told People this week.
He followed it with the action comedy Novocaine in 2025, and now The Mosquito Bowl, Peter Berg’s World War II drama based on Buzz Bissinger’s book. Ray plays Tony Butkovich, one of the college football stars who joined the Marines after Pearl Harbor. The role cost him. He fell in a rock quarry during filming and found “a hole, like a crater” in his knee, he told People, and he was back on set the day after surgery. “We’re actors. It’s not war,” he said. The film opens in theaters October 30 and arrives on Netflix November 25.
The comparison never really went away, but he learned to handle it. When he first started taking acting classes, “I was comparing myself to a three-Oscar-winning, five-decade career,” he told People. These days the approach is smaller. “I think for me the thing is just keeping it really simple,” he said, taking the work “breath by breath.” EntertainmentNow, which also covered the premiere interview, noted that Ray sees himself as “just at the beginning” of his career.
Where Is Jack Nicholson Today?
The father he grew up measuring himself against has quietly stepped back from Hollywood. Jack, born April 22, 1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey, hasn’t made a movie since How Do You Know in 2010, and he rarely appears in public. His last big night out came on February 16, 2025, when he walked onstage at the SNL50 anniversary special to introduce Adam Sandler, with Lorraine beside him. Danny DeVito has since shared a rare update on his old friend, and on Jack’s 89th birthday this April, Lorraine posted a photo of him smiling and clapping at home next to Joni Mitchell, according to Newsweek and Variety.
If you followed the Lakers in the 1980s, you remember where Jack could always be found. He has held courtside season tickets for four decades, according to ET, and Ray has often been the one sitting next to him, from a 2019 game against the Golden State Warriors to the 2021 season opener against the same team. Ray’s older siblings include Lorraine, Caleb Goddard, born in 1970, and Jennifer, Jack’s eldest, born in 1963 to his first wife, Sandra Knight.
Ray has said his father is at peace with his career. “I think my dad is really happy with his body of work. He has done enough,” he told USA Today. Jack hasn’t seen The Mosquito Bowl yet, People reported. But he has seen enough of his son’s work to say something Ray will never forget.
What Jack Nicholson Told His Son About His Work
When People asked about his father’s feedback, Ray didn’t reach for anything about technique. He repeated, word for word, the note Jack gave him after watching him on screen. “They keep cutting back to him. They keep cutting back to him. He’s strong, and they keep cutting back to him,” Ray recalled his father saying. Coming from a man with 12 Oscar nominations, that is about the highest praise an actor can get, because the editor keeps the camera on you only when you’re worth watching.
It also explains how Ray now thinks about the name he once wanted to run from. “Look, I love my dad. He’s my favorite actor. I’ll never be ashamed of being his son,” he told People. “I’m just at the beginning. I’m really, really at the beginning. I’m really proud of what I did here,” he added of his new film. “I look forward to continuing that legacy.”