Jack Nicholson

In 1974, a Time magazine researcher working on a cover story told Jack Nicholson something he had never known: the woman he had grown up believing was his sister, June, was actually his mother. The woman he had called his mother, Ethel, was his grandmother. Both women had died by then, and the identity of his biological father has never been established. Nicholson was 37 and already a star.

The story makes one placement in his chart unusually striking. Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, at about 11:00 a.m., a time rated A by Astro-Databank. His official record is a delayed report of birth filed when he was 17, which lists Neptune, New Jersey, though his own website says he was actually born in New York City. Pluto sits in Cancer in his twelfth house. Cancer is the sign of family and mothers; the twelfth house is the hidden end of the chart, linked with secrets and things kept from view; Pluto is the planet of what is buried and eventually revealed. Astrologers could hardly ask for a more literal picture of a family secret.

His Sun is in Taurus in the tenth house, near the top of the wheel, with Mercury in Taurus and Venus in Aries nearby in the same house. The tenth is career and public reputation, and Taurus is steady and sensual. A Taurus Sun in the tenth points to a long, durable career and to someone comfortable in his public role, and Nicholson spent more than fifty years as one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Leo is on his Ascendant, the sign of the showman, and his public face has always been theatrical: the grin, the sunglasses, the courtside seats at Lakers games. His screen persona combined Leo charisma with an edge of menace that made him equally convincing as a charming rebel and as a man coming apart.

He spent years in Roger Corman's low-budget films, writing as well as acting, before Easy Rider in 1969 made him famous and brought his first Oscar nomination. Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest followed; the last won him Best Actor. He won again for Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets, and his twelve nominations are the most for any male actor. Along the way he made The Shining, and its most famous line.

His Moon is at the final degree of Virgo in the third house, the area of early life and close family. Virgo Moons are observant and analytical, and in the third they notice what is said and not said at home. Mars, retrograde in Sagittarius, sits in the fifth house of creativity and pleasure, giving his performances their restless, appetitive energy.

He found out who his mother was decades after everyone else in the family knew. It may be no coincidence that so many of his best roles are men with something hidden underneath.