Jack on Jack

EW The art here is pretty spectacular. Those two are Picassos, right?
NICHOLSON Yeah. I have about 600 or 700 paintings at this point. I have pretty eclectic tastes in pictures. But, you know, it's not bullshit -- there really is a difference between a good and bad painting.

EW I noticed some watercolors in the hallway. Signed by you. When did you pick up painting?
NICHOLSON I started doing it with my kids, but it's only been a few years since I got to the point where I've been using my own paints instead of theirs. It's such a cliché -- the actor who paints -- but one of the things I've remembered from painting with my children is that I had some talent for it as a child myself. And I find it very restful. I do it a lot at night.

EW [Ripping up a $5 bill] Okay, what's the story with the bowl of money?
NICHOLSON One night years ago I was here with my friends Harry Dean Stanton and the author Richard Brautigan [''Trout Fishing in America'']. We were talking about a project we were going to do with [director] Hal Ashby at the time. Now, Richard had this literary thing going. He keeps saying how he doesn't care about money and how Hollywood is for whores. And after we had been imbibing for a while and admiring the art collection, he takes out two $50 bills and tears them up and throws them at the fireplace. Well, the next morning, I find some of the torn 50s on the floor and I just mindlessly put them into this thing here. It's some sort of candy dish but everybody always used it as an ashtray. For some reason, though, after I put the 50s in there, nobody used it as an ashtray ever again. Instead, people would always ask me about it -- what's with the torn money in the dish? And I started to realize that I was creating a work of art. It was sculpture, as much as that Salvador Dalí piece over there. In fact, of all the things that are in this room -- the Picassos, the Francis Bacon, the Magritte -- this bowl of money is the one piece of art that always draws the most comments and attention.

EW So, how much do you suppose it's worth?
NICHOLSON I don't know. I haven't counted it in a while. How much did you put in?