Jack Nicholson's Alleged 1970s Affair Is One Of His Most Scandalous

It's no secret that Jack Nicholson's love life is complicated, but one of his scandalous affairs still had us shocked. That'd be his relationship with his "Five Easy Pieces" co-star Susan Anspach, which led to the birth of his eldest son in 1970. What makes things so scandalous is that he only officially acknowledged the child they shared decades later — and let's just say, his relationship (if it was ever more than a dalliance) with Anspach herself wasn't exactly the stuff of co-parenting dreams. 

Jack first spoke about his relationship with Anspach and the possibility of having fathered her son, Caleb Goddard, in a 1984 Rolling Stone interview. However, he certainly didn't paint a picture of a functional family unit. Far from it, asked about the possibility of Goddard being his son, he said of Anspach, "She says that all the time. But because of the way she's been toward me, I've never been allowed a real avenue to find out about it. That's her privacy. She's an avant-garde feminist who — when I met her — was proud of the fact that she already had a child whose father no one knew" (via Internet Archive Wayback Machine). He added, "She didn't mention her second child to me until six or seven years later." 

Questions about Goddard, and Jack's relationship with Anspach, started up again in the '90s, after Anspach sent a letter to Vanity Fair asking for a correction of an article in which the magazine said that Jack's lookalike son, Ray Nicholson, was his eldest male child. "Our son, Caleb, is Jack's older son and second oldest child," she wrote, going on to reveal that they even had a relationship. "Because Jack loves Caleb, I'm sure he would want me to have you make this correction," she said. Unfortunately for Anspach, that warmth didn't extend to her.

Unfortunately for anyone who thought Jack Nicholson and Susan Anspach would become friendly co-parents, it seems the opposite was true. According to The Guardian, Nicholson gave Anspach a house, but that was on the proviso that she not talk publicly about sharing a child with him. Fast-forward to her letter to Vanity Fair, and a shady Nicholson made it clear he was unhappy about her comments. 

Speaking to The New York Times, he said, "I told Ms. Anspach in no uncertain terms that this is a catastrophic approach to life, making public protestations and all that." The public back-and-forth was still relatively mild, though. Soon after that drama, Anspach and Nicholson ended up in a highly-publicized legal battle over the house and money owed to the latter, with the former saying the movie star had lent her money and assured her that even if she couldn't pay it back, nothing would happen to her home. However, as seen in a quote from legal docs published by the Los Angeles Times in 1996, Nicholson's lawyers countered, "Unfortunately for Anspach the law is straightforward. ... When you borrow money, eventually you have to pay it back."

Despite all the drama between him and Anspach, it seems Nicholson and Caleb Goddard did have a decent relationship. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1998, Nicholson gushed, "Caleb and I have been getting along beautifully now." However, asked about people viewing the father-son dynamic as "problematic," the actor added, "Based on the legality — the extremely unpleasant litigious nature of most of my relationship there — I'm not really at liberty to say what I think about it." Possibly because of that, not much else is known about Nicholson's relationship with Anspach herself, and whether they ever made nice. Talk about drama.