Anjelica Huston On Why Jack Nicholson Doesn't Make Movies Anymore

The actress on growing up in Hollywood, the price of beating Oprah at the Oscars, and why Jack Nicholson doesn’t make movies anymore.

- Andrew Goldman

Anjelica Huston admits that her latest film, John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, is not in her favorite genre. “I don’t like violent movies,” she says. “But I like this movie.” Huston plays a small but memorable role as the Director, a heavily bejeweled Russian ballet instructor and one of only a handful of humans to appear onscreen who are not immediately stabbed, shot, impaled, julienned, or otherwise ingeniously killed by Keanu Reeves’s titular bounty hunter. All things considered, it’s a perfect role for her— dignified enough for a 67-year-old Oscar winner and trustee of a four generation show-business dynasty, and, given all the potential sequels, a nice break for an actress who still needs to work for a living, as Huston says she does. John Wick may be ultraviolent, yet it’s a franchise made for dog lovers. “This is a movie about a guy who’s basically avenging the death of his puppy,” she says. “Jesus, I’m passionate about dogs. It’s a huge thing.” She has three that she dotes on as well as a sheep, 13 goats, and five horses residing at the ranch she’s owned for 35 years in the foothills of California’s Sequoia National Forest. I meet Huston—in jeans, a crisp, starched white blouse, and a chunky tinted pair of Persols—for a three-hour lunch at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, ten minutes from her Pacific Palisades home.

Andrew Goldman: Your dad, John Huston, was a magical presence in your life but also largely absent. 1 I was reading an old interview with him where he talked about growing up the son of Walter Huston. 2 He said that his father’s occupation as an actor simply meant that he never saw him. It’s sounds like it was similar growing up with a director father.