Jack Nicholson’s daughter looks back on his romance with Lara Flynn Boyle: ‘Point of no return’
Jack Nicholson’s daughter, Lorraine Nicholson, had her own love story with his ex Lara Flynn Boyle.
Lorraine, 34, wrote an essay for Vanity Fair on Friday where she looked back on the special bond she created with Boyle, 54, when the “Twink Peaks” actress dated Jack, 87, from 1999 to 2004.
“For many girls, best friends are their first loves. They spend all their time together. Learn from each other. Protect each other,” Lorraine wrote. “And when the time comes for boys to enter the picture—and a best friend’s attention is split between them and another—it is their first great heartbreak.”
“When I was nine, my best friend was 30-year-old ingenue Lara Flynn Boyle,” Lorraine added.
Jack’s daughter recalled how the couple’s relationship “began with a bang” in 1999, when they got into a car accident on Mulholland Drive.
Lorraine explained that at the time, there was “spectacle” over Jack and Boyle’s relationship because they were 33 years apart in age. But according to Lorraine, “no one could see they were actually falling in love.”
Jack eventually introduced Boyle to his six children, including Lorraine, who said it was a moment she’ll “never forget.”
“She came down the outdoor staircase to join us by the pool,” Lorraine recalled of meeting Boyle. “I remember the sun reflecting on the water, the sound of wind chimes in the trees. Most importantly, I remember what Lara wore—a thong bathing suit with flames licking up the crotch. We didn’t have to know she had been nominated for an Emmy that year for her work on ‘The Practice’ for my brother and I to know we were in the presence of a powerful person.”
Lorraine said that she and Boyle connected almost instantly.
“With extrasensory intuition, she sensed I was a self-harmer and told me stories about the time she had to wear knee socks to hide her scratched-up shins,” Lorraine shared, adding that Boyle “made me feel like my pain mattered.”
“While the unavailability of my parents was not exactly rats-in-trash-bags level, I was a kid who felt, despite everything I had materially, there was something missing in my life,” Lorraine continued. “Lara did not belittle these feelings. She told all these stories with a cigarette and a smile, because she was a survivor.”
Lorraine also said that Boyle “acted as a bridge” between Jack and his six children, whom he shares with five different women, including Lorraine’s mom, Rebecca Broussard.
“Suddenly, we were doing things we had never done before,” Lorraine remembered. “In Aspen, we went whitewater rafting down the Colorado River. In one particularly traitorous game of Uno, my brother and I kamakazied ourselves so that while we wouldn’t win, my father wouldn’t either. After he stormed out of the room, followed by a trail of very Nicholson obscenities, it was Lara who put a stop to his sulking and lured him back upstairs.”
She added, “Since his relationship with my mom, I had never seen my father with another woman. Like in the Mary Poppins films, I understand why it was Lara who sent the other applicants blowing ass-over-heels down the street.”
Lorraine called Jack and Boyle’s relationship “a point of no return” because Boyle “went from being a woman on the verge of stardom—a person validated for her work—to a mere celebrity.”
Jack and Boyle eventually split in 2004 — and Lorraine said she still has “no clue why.”
“I don’t know if he cried or if she cried, but I certainly did,” Lorraine wrote. “I woke one snowy winter morning at our house in Aspen and she had just—vanished.”
“I’d known my father’s relationship with Lara couldn’t last forever, and yet when I was with her, I had no clue what I would do without her,” she said.
At the end of her essay, Lorraine wrote, “For this article, I asked Lara if I could see her for the first time in more than 20 years to talk about the time we shared. She declined.”
“Of course, this feels like being rejected by Mommy,” she said. “But the truth is, whether I see Lara again or not is almost irrelevant, because I carry so much of her in me.”
Boyle, who has been married to Texas real estate developer Donald Ray Thomas II since 2006, made a rare comment about Nicholson in an interview with People last year.