Jack Nicholson's actor son Ray shares true feelings about famous dad in honest confession

Growing up the son of three-time Academy Award winner Jack Nicholson does come with some intimidation factor, by the looks of it!

Ray Nicholson, Jack’s son with his ex-girlfriend Rebecca Broussard, spoke with his sister Lorraine Nicholson for a new interview with Interview Magazine.

Jack Nicholson's son Ray has his smile — Jack Nicholson’s son Ray Nicholson opened up in a new interview about his journey to the screen

The 34-year-old, who made his screen debut as an extra in 2006’s The Benchwarmers before transitioning to adult work in the late 2010s and early 2020s, opened up about his latest project, Netflix’s adaptation of The Mosquito Bowl, and growing up in Hollywood.

As he relayed to his older sister, 36, Ray grew up playing football and believed that would be his career as well. “Actually, I thought that I was going to go to Boston College and play football. I thought I was going to be Jerry Maguire. I love sports so much,” he said.

In fact, it’s also the one thing he and Jack, now 89, bond over the most. “It’s also the language of love that me and dad share. We can’t talk about a lot, but we can talk about the [expletive] Lakers until kingdom come.”

“But anyway, we have this very Friday Night Lights moment, 4th and 1, and we lose the game,” Ray recalled of the day everything changed. “I sat in a locker room for 45 minutes, just devastated that this high school football thing was over.”

Ray Nicholson bares a striking resemblance to his dad Jack in posters for Smile 2 — Ray’s breakthrough role was his antagonistic turn in 2024’s “Smile 2”

“I go home with mom, and by the time I get home, I can’t move my arm. I go to mom, I’m like, ‘I think I broke my elbow.’ We went to the hospital right away and they sent us out because I had a staph infection that got so bad it turned into MRSA, and I had to have 24-hour nurses. They put a mark on my arm that was like, ‘If it gets past here, we’re cutting your arm.'”

The health scare actually ended up being a moment of reckoning for Ray, who decided then and there that it was time to make a switch – and the idea of telling his dad did inspire some fear in him. “And it was this voice-of-god moment that was like, ‘You don’t want to do this. You want to be an actor.’ I was really scared to tell dad.”

jack nicholson and ray nicholson nba game — “We can’t talk about a lot, but we can talk about the [expletive] Lakers until kingdom come.”

However, joining the University of Southern California’s film school gave him a whole new perspective on cinema – one that taught him that his dad wasn’t the center of Hollywood, and there were a lot more figures he could cull inspiration from as well.

“But I went to USC and learned to love everything about filmmaking,” Ray continued. “My education really taught me that dad isn’t god. He’s not the only thing in this film industry. He’s a beautiful part of it, but a very small part.”