JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF ONE HE'S BACK DOING WHAT HE LOVES MOST.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Jack Nicholson won his third Academy Award three years ago, and we haven't seen him in a movie since.

Most actors could not get away with being out of the limelight for so long, especially when they had a high-profile critical/commercial hit like ``As Good As It Gets'' to capitalize on.

But then, Nicholson gets away with more than most.

``No minor ones,'' the 63-year-old superstar responds, a famous eyebrow arching, when asked what vices he had left. ``And I'm awfully fond of banana cream pie.''

That's Jack, whose charm and wit have enabled him to reign as both Hollywood's best-loved star and one of its least-repentent bad boys for more than 30 years.

Of course, talent and that rare thing called star quality had a lot to do with it too, as well as the good taste and fortune to get attached to landmark movies - ``Easy Rider,'' ``Chinatown,'' ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' ``The Shining,'' ``Terms of Endearment'' and ``Batman'' are a few - that superbly showcased his maverick emotional intelligence.

It remains to be seen, however, whether Nicholson can still get away with following up his last big hit, three years on, with as downbeat and demanding a piece as any that he's done.

``The Pledge,'' which was directed by Sean Penn and adapted from an experimental crime novel by Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt, arguably contains one of Nicholson's finest performances. As Reno homicide detective Jerry Black, a newly retired cop whose vow to find a little girl's killer gradually grows into a maddening obsession, the actor gives one of his subtlest, most exquisitely detailed performances. It's as devastatingly nuanced a job as Melvin Udall, the neurotic writer Nicholson played in his last film, was a triumph of bravura, attention-getting technique.

But ``The Pledge's'' precise, aching central performance - and Nicholson is in practically every shot of the two-hour-plus movie - comes in a deliberately paced, barely plotted, all-but-unrelenting package of depression. The ending ain't happy, neither.

This is the kind of artistic exercise many serious actors go for when they feel they've achieved enough clout to indulge such a thing without too much career damage. Nicholson surpassed that level long ago, and has made this sort of movie throughout his career. But even he couldn't pull a large audience in for Michelangelo Antonioni's ``The Passenger,'' ``Ironweed,'' ``Hoffa'' nor his last collaboration with director Penn, ``The Crossing Guard.''

And ``The Pledge'' is coming out at a time when commercial escapism dominates the Hollywood landscape like never before. But going against several kinds of conventional flows was the piece's great attraction.

``One of the good things about working with Sean is, first of all, the material that he chooses,'' Nicholson says. ``You're not in competition with a (special-effects) bluescreen or a dog, or any of those things that make for successful movies at the moment. He's interested in humanity and human observation, and as I read the scripts for the two movies that I've done with him, I knew - knowing my craft - that they were going to draw on the best of what I do in my job. The scenes are not all about plot, there are a lot of tangential human relationships going on, and through all of that behavior remains the obligation to tell a story.

``That's kind of a long answer, but if you read a lot of scripts, you know that this is a movie that deals with real humanity, and not in a melodramatic way. What I can say unabashedly about the movie is that it's in a very familiar genre, but it's totally unique. I defy anybody who's not familiar with the material to, as you can in most films, predict the ending of the picture. In something as simple as the detective story, that's a hard thing to accomplish.''

And a risky thing.

``It's engrossing as you follow it, it touches on a lot of things in life that are worth being discussed and articulated,'' Nicholson says of the genre-buster. ``You know, it's all of the things, other than a barndance, that movies should be good at. I just hope that's enough anymore, today; I don't see why it shouldn't be.''

Nicholson reveals that he based Jerry's behavior more on his own personality than on the hard-bitten, inured-to-horror cop so common in films, books and television shows.

``I didn't want to play that conventional wisdom of nothing affects him,'' he says. ``A lot of times, you don't have the opportunity for playing a part naturalistically.''

It was that whole attitude of trying something different and true that, according to Penn, was instrumental in setting the crucial tone for the production, which was filmed on a minuscule budget in remote areas of British Columbia last winter.

``I think he is uniquely That Guy in this area of the creative world,'' says Penn, no minor acting talent himself. ``Jack excites people, makes everybody respond by his warmth, by his talent, by his intelligence, by his optimism. He is a phenomenon and a force, in the movies and on the movie set. They always say that the job of the director is to create an environment on the set; well, it's pretty easy when Jack's the guy. He shows up every day going, 'Mornin' boys, let's go to work.' ''

So why such a long period away from the thing he loves? Nicholson notes that he's taken years off between projects before. And with two young kids, ages 10 and 8, to bring up (there's also an adult daughter from his one marriage, to Sandra Knight, and a grown son with ``Five Easy Pieces'' co-star Susan Anspach), not to mention a gossip-generating romance with 30-year-old ``Practice'' actress Lara Flynn Boyle to maintain, Nicholson certainly had other things to do.

Besides, the last thing he needs is the money. Though he was one of Hollywood's top stars for nearly two decades beforehand, Nicholson pioneered the movie mega-payday with his 1989 deal to play The Joker in ``Batman,'' a back-end merchandising percentage bargain that reportedly earned him a whopping $60 million. In 1992, just to cop a little pocket money, he commanded $5 million to do just three scenes in ``A Few Good Men'' - and came away with one of his most indelible catch lines, ``You can't handle the truth,'' to boot.

The truth is, the fatherless kid from New Jersey has come quite a long way, and it took a good long time. He began his acting career as ``The Cry Baby Killer'' for exploitation producer Roger Corman in 1958, and it was a decade's worth of Corman horror, cycle gang and drug trip cheapies until, as a last-minute casting replacement, he stole the show from stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the 1969 box-office phenomenon ``Easy Rider.''

Though a few years older than the actual demographic, Nicholson went on to personify the rebellious, searching soul of the baby-boom generation on screen throughout the 1970s. He eventually eclipsed all of his peers - Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro - in celebrity and star power, despite being the most closely linked to the tenor of the time in which he emerged as an icon.

Maybe some of that longevity has to do with his ability to take a voluntary break.

``This was about the third time in my career where I just took what they call a year off,'' he says. ``I don't read scripts, and I don't talk about movies, just to kind of refill the old tub. Believe it or not, there is a life outside of Hollywood, and I have a lot of things I like to do. I play a lot of golf, for instance. I started to paint again to get my children interested in it, and pretty soon I got into it again. I socialize, I travel a little bit. And one of the things that being a film actor robs you of, oddly, is reading for pleasure. Pretty much the minute when I stop working, I spend most of the time reading until I'm exhausted. It's like a drug of some kind.''

OK, but is that a major or minor vice? Regardless, Nicholson is back in work mode, preparing to headline the film ``About Schmidt'' for director Alexander Payne (``Election''). The actor describes it as a dark comedy about a guy who's about to retire, which makes it his second retiree movie in a row.

Anything to be inferred from that?

``Any actor will always be attracted to an opportunity to be involved in one more good movie,'' he explains. ``Unless I decide that's not the best thing for me, there's no need to retire, not retire, whatever it is. I mean, very few actors have to think about it; you get retired!

``But yeah, I love doing it, I love being on a set and acting. I talked to Clint Eastwood a couple of years ago about retiring and all this stuff, and I ran into him recently and he said, 'Well, I see neither one of has quit.' And I told him what I did find out by thinking about it - and I'm sure it's true of Clint, too - is that I do it because I need to be expressive. I'll admit that I need to be expressive, and that's why you do it past a certain point.''

And as Jack Nicholson and the rest of us know, there are worse vices.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Jack's back

While life's as good as it gets, Nicholson still has the acting bug

(2 -- 3) Patricia Clarkson plays a mother mourning for the loss of her child and is comforted by Michael O'Keefe, left, when retired Reno homicide detective Jerry Black (played by Jack Nicholson) takes it upon himself to deliver the tragic news to the family in Sean Penn's ``The Pledge.''

(4) Sam Shepard, left, stars as the town's police captain who celebrates at Jack Nicholson's retirement party in ``The Pledge.''

(5) `Any actor will always be attracted to an opportunity to be involved in one more good movie. Unless I decide that's not the best thing for me, there's no need to retire, not retire, whatever it is.'

Jack Nicholson

on why he continues to act