One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was released on this day in 1975.

In December of ’75, Brad Darrach filed this story for People:

“A star on a movie set is like a bomb,” Nicholson muses late one night in a Manhattan bistro. He is there for an after-theater snack with Anjelica Huston, 24, director John Huston’s actress-daughter, and Jack’s closest companion for more than two years. Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and David Geffen are sitting at the same table. “That bomb,” Nicholson goes on, “has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear. Because if a living reality doesn’t exist between the players in a scene, the scene won’t play. For instance, I never think of the actors I’m playing with as actors. I think of them as the people they’re pretending to be. That way, if an actor makes a mistake, I don’t feel it as a mistake. I see it as a quirk in that person’s behavior, and I react to that quirk.”

“What bothers me about my acting? Well, I don’t like my smile and sometimes I get into too much physical business. But the biggest difficulty right now is that I’m in too many pictures. People complain that they see too much Nicholson. So in Cuckoo’s Nest I’ve developed a new technique. I pull my hat over my eyes, turn my back to the camera—and disappear within the very movie I am making!”