Jack Nicholson’s daughter Lorraine Nicholson used to be close friends with one of her father’s paramours.
“For many girls, best friends are their first loves. They spend all their time together. Learn from each other. Protect each other,” Lorraine, 34, wrote in a Friday, January 24, essay for Vanity Fair. “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 9, my best friend was 30-year-old ingenue Lara Flynn Boyle.”
Twin Peaks alum Boyle, now 54, started dating Nicholson, now 87, in 1999.
“Much like the universe, Lara’s romance with my father began with a bang. One quiet summer night in 1999, the nascent couple was dressed for dinner, the engine of his Mercedes the only sound,” Lorraine recalled. “My father moved to make a left on Mulholland from Coldwater, just a quarter mile from our house when their car collided with another. When Dad finally came to, head dripping blood, he looked up to see Lara crawling out of the sunroof. She reportedly screamed, ‘I can’t be here!’ and abandoned the steaming hunk of metal like it was a dead horse.”
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Lorraine further claimed in the essay that she didn’t learn about the car accident from a family member, but instead from “a nosy mother at school.”
“I’d seen my dad just a few days previously and he didn’t mention a car accident,” she wrote. “Not knowing the news would be picked up by the tabloids, he wanted to introduce Lara on his own terms.”
Jack and Boyle, who have a 33-year age gap, dated from 1999 to 2004. Eventually, he introduced the actress to his children. (Jack is a father of six, sharing Lorraine and son Ray with ex Rebecca Broussard. He also shares daughter Jennifer with Sandra Knight, son Caleb with Susan Anspach, daughter Honey with Winnie Hollman and daughter Tessa with Jennine Gourin.)
“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,” Lorraine said. “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.”
She added, “That day, I was too afraid to speak to her. Instead, I watched her surreptitiously from the shallow end, as she read a book on a plastic raft, the wind gently pushing her back and forth across the surface of the water. Finally, she had arrived, the answer to my prayers — the Mary Poppins of Mulholland Drive.”
Once Lorraine met Boyle, she said that she was captivated by the actress’ charm, confidence and compassion.
“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 said. “Lara made me feel like my pain mattered. … I was a kid who felt, despite everything I had materially, there was something missing in my life. Lara did not belittle these feelings. She told all these stories with a cigarette and a smile because she was a survivor.”
With time, Lorraine said that she “grabbed onto [Boyle] like she was made of glue.”
“For my father, Lara acted as a bridge between him and his children. Suddenly, we were doing things we had never done before,” Lorraine added. “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.”
Jack and Boyle eventually called it quits in 2004 and, as Lorraine wrote in her essay, she still has “no clue why.”
“I don’t know if he cried or if she cried, but I certainly did. I woke one snowy winter morning at our house in Aspen and she had just — vanished,” Lorraine remembered. “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.”
According to Lorraine, the last words Boyle ever told her were, “I’ll always have you in my heart, baby.” Lorraine has not seen Boyle since her breakup with Jack.
