Jack Nicholson never officially announced the end of his acting career.
Will the eccentric and brilliant screen star really no longer wear his famous grin in front of the film camera?
After cult classics such as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "The Shining" and as a joker in "Batman", the Hollywood star is indispensable.
But the three-time Oscar winner has hardly appeared in public in recent years.
Today, Friday (April 22), he will be 85 years old.
Jack Nicholson no longer gives interviews, according to his spokeswoman's negative decision in response to a request from the German Press Agency.
And plans for his birthday?
If they exist at all, they are a private matter, Sandy Bresler said.
Jack Nicholson pulls out of Toni Erdmann remake
Nicholson last appeared in front of the camera in 2010 for the romantic comedy "How do you know that it's love?" with Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd, but only in a small supporting role.
Hollywood pricked up all the more when in February 2017 reports circulated about a planned US remake of Maren Ade's hit comedy "Toni Erdmann" with Nicholson in the quirky father role.
The German director told the press in Santa Monica after winning the Spirit Award for Toni Erdmann that he was one of the best actors ever.
"There are so many films with him that I love very much," Variety quoted from the interview.
However, she herself did not want to get involved in a remake, emphasized Ade.
A year later, Nicholson backed down.
Last October, the avid basketball fan was spotted spectating at his favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers.
His appearances have become so rare that the photographers immediately jumped at the star – with a stubbly beard and typical sunglasses – and his son Ray at his side.
Jack Nicholson leads a reclusive life in Hollywood
It has been many years since Nicholson's last major appearance on the Oscars stage.
In 2013 he presented the contenders in the top category "Best Film".
Nicholson sported his charming "killer smile" and unabashedly flirted with then-22-year-old Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence.
He burst into the middle of a live interview and showered compliments on the young winner.
"You look like a former friend of mine," enthused the veteran star.
The video made people laugh online, and the macho screen was ridiculed.
Nicholson lives a secluded life in his mansion on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.
"I wish me one last romance," he admitted in a rare 2015 interview with Closer magazine.
But that probably won't happen again.
At his age, it "just doesn't feel right" to hit on women.
Nicholson left little out in his life.
He has five children by four women, and he only tried marriage once, from 1962 to 1968 with actress Sandra Knight.
He had a stormy relationship with Anjelica Huston, daughter of US director John Huston, for 17 years.
It finally broke when he got his daughter Jennifer's best friend, model Rebecca Broussard, pregnant.
They have two children together.
Jack Nicholson finds out late who his mother is
Nicholson was born in 1937 as the illegitimate child of a 17-year-old dancer in New Jersey.
Raised by her parents, he didn't find out until he was 37 that his supposed "sister" June was actually his mother.
The great Hollywood career began with messenger jobs in the animation department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
He owed one of his first film roles to trash master Roger Corman in the horror flick Little Shop of Horrors.
He celebrated his breakthrough as a drinking lawyer in the road movie "Easy Rider" (1969).
The film with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as motorcyclists in search of freedom and adventure became a cult.
He brought Nicholson the first of twelve Oscar nominations.
He won his first Oscar for best actor as an inmate in a mental hospital.
The torn, rebellious character of patient Randle McMurphy in the multi-award-winning 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest remains one of his best roles to date.
Hits like Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and Prizzi's Honor (1985) followed.
He received his other two Oscars for his roles as a former astronaut and drunkard in Days of Tenderness (1983) and as a grumpy neurotic in the sarcastic comedy As Good as It Gets (1997).
In between, he showed his mad grin as the Joker in the comic adaptation "Batman" (1989).
Jack Nicholson shows a new side as he ages
The old master revealed a new side in 2002 in Alexander Payne's tragic comedy "About Schmidt", in which he shows the signs of aging without any vanity.
In The Heart Desires (2003) with Diane Keaton, Nicholson starred in an open hospital gown with a bare bottom.
In "The best comes last" he played a bald-headed, lined-faced man with cancer.
"I always wanted to be a character actor," said Nicholson in 2008 at the German premiere of the tragic comedy in Berlin.
"But the truth is, of course, I think I'm the most beautiful person in the world," the star jokingly added.