“My character and Jack’s character are polar opposites, and this scene points it up more than anything else,” Bates says. “She is open to the point of just embarrassing the hell out of him. And he’s completely repressed and closed. So Alexander and I negotiated back and forth, sending emails. What we arrived at was something that made us both happy.”
Chances are good that this year Bates will receive her third Academy Award nomination (she got one for her supporting role in Primary Colors, and she won a Best Actress statuette for Misery). Whether or not she does, the actress, who serves on the Academy’s board of governors, will be at the ceremony. In all likelihood Nicholson will also be nominated. He has already won a Golden Globe for About Schmidt. In his acceptance speech, the actor inexplicably referred to Bates as that edifice from the horror movie Psycho — the Bates Motel.
“It was nothing he’s ever called me in my presence,” she says, arching a brow. But
she’ll let it go. During the many hours that they sat submerged in bubbling water together, getting out every few minutes “so our skin wouldn’t prune up,” Nicholson put her at ease by talking about the novelist Philip Roth. After the scene wrapped, Bates was stepping out of the tub for the last time when Nicholson told her something she’ll always remember.
“He said, ‘Beautiful work, honey,’ which I loved. Because he was making sure not to look anywhere he wasn’t supposed to,” she says, laughing again. “Beautiful work, honey,” she repeats, savoring the words.
