Carol Kane Recalls Jack Nicholson's Act of Kindness That Makes Her 'Want to Cry'
Carol Kane was “still collecting unemployment” when she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for 1975’s Hester Street at just 24 years old.
In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, she describes the period as “very overwhelming,” explaining, “I wasn’t prepared for it.”
“When you get nominated, suddenly you become extremely popular,” she recalls.
Kane lost the award to One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest’s Louise Fletcher — and the next morning, she found herself alone in her hotel room.
“I was picking up the phone to make sure there’s a dial tone, because it was so quiet,” she remembers.
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When her friend and former The Last Detail (1973) costar Jack Nicholson, who had won Best Actor for Cuckoo’s Nest, called, it moved Kane deeply.
“Jack knows what it’s like to win—and not to win,” she says. “He knows what the next day’s like.”
Nicholson invited Kane to lunch and drove to pick her up.
“It makes me want to cry because it was so kind,” Kane remembers, tearing up.
The actress, 67, who recently wrapped up four hilarious years playing a street-savvy landlady on Tina Fey’s Netflix sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (there’s now a Kimmy TV movie in the works), is back on the small screen in a darker role alongside Al Pacino in the Amazon series Hunters. In it, she plays an operative chasing clandestine Nazis in 1977 New York.
Hunters debuts on Amazon Prime on Feb. 21.
