Today in History: Jack Nicholson gets involved in road rage incident
A witness confirmed the victim’s account of the incident, and misdemeanour charges of assault and vandalism were filed against Nicholson.
On this day in 1994, Anger Management star Jack Nicholson used a golf club to bash the roof and windshield of another motorist’s car in a fit of road rage.
In a criminal lawsuit filed against the actor, Robert Blank stated that Nicholson, then 56, approached Blank’s Mercedes-Benz while he was stopped at a red light in North Hollywood. After accusing the other man of cutting him off in traffic, Nicholson used a golf club to bash the roof and windshield of Blank’s car.
Charges were dropped after Nicholson apologised to Blank and the two reached an undisclosed settlement, which included a reported $500 000 cheque from Nicholson.
Nicholson later expressed regret about the incident in an interview with Us Magazine, calling it “a shameful incident in my life”. He explained that a close friend had recently died, and that he had also been under a good deal of stress during the shooting of his most recent movie at the time, The Crossing Guard.
In that film, directed by Sean Penn, Nicholson played the role of Freddie Gale, a man who vows to wreak vengeance on the drunk driver who killed his daughter. According to Nicholson, he went “out of my mind” after being cut off and snatched one of his golf clubs from the trunk of his car. Though press reports of the incident variously reported that the club in question had been a three- or a five-iron, Nicholson (who started golfing seriously after learning the game for the filming of 1990’s The Two Jakes) cleared up the issue in a 2007 interview with Golf Digest. “I was on my way to the course, and in the midst of this madness I somehow knew what I was doing,” he said. “Because I reached into my trunk and specifically selected a club I never used on the course: my two-iron”.
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