Jack Nicholson’s Daughter Recalls Dad’s Romance with Lara Flynn Boyle

Jack Nicholson’s daughter Lorraine Nicholson is reflecting on her dad’s relationship with Lara Flynn Boyle and the positive influence the actress had on the family dynamic. 

In a recent essay for Vanity Fair, Lorraine recalled being a child when her father, now 87, romanced the former Twin Peaks star, now 54, in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“I’ll never forget the first day Lara was introduced to us children. She came down the outdoor staircase to join us by the pool. I remember the sun reflecting on the water, the sound of wind chimes in the trees,” Nicholson, now 34, wrote of the encounter with the bikini-clad Boyle at the family home in Los Angeles. 

“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,” continued Lorraine, whose mother, Rebecca Broussard, was in a relationship with Nicholson from 1989 to 1994. (Nicholson and Broussard also share a son, actor Ray Nicholson, 32.)

Lorraine recalled her father’s house being the opposite of her mother’s loud, boisterous home. “We lived among an almost mausoleum-level quiet. By his own admission, my dad had a hard time connecting to us as children — though he loved beautiful women, he had no interest in playing with dolls,” she wrote.

Enter Boyle — aka “the Mary Poppins of Mulholland Drive” — who played Barbie dolls with Lorraine and slept in the same room if the young girl had bad dreams.

Boyle, a “gangly Irish American” who was picked apart in the press for her appearance, also helped Lorraine deal with her own insecurities at an impressionable age: “Lara taught me that much like femininity, adolescence can be depressing and confusing, but it can also be full of freedom and unencumbered play.”

Their play also extended to family time. “For my father, Lara acted as a bridge between him and his children. Suddenly, we were doing things we had never done before. In Aspen, we went whitewater rafting down the Colorado River. We cackled wildly while playing Parcheesi. 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,” she recalled.

“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,” added Lorraine.

Lorraine knew even at that young age that the relationship between her father and Boyle wouldn’t stand the test of time. “And yet when I was with her, I had no clue what I would do without her,” she wrote.

The relationship did indeed come to an end, severing Lorraine’s ties, too. According to the writer, they have not seen each other for more than 20 years, but Boyle’s influence left a mark on Lorraine.

“I carry so much of her in me,” she wrote. “When she descended from the sky with her magic carpet bag, I was still figuring out the type of woman I wanted to be. In Lara, I saw characteristics that I liked— her irreverent sense of humor, her refusal to conform, her compassion for the underdog — and made them my own.”