Jack Nicholson called his ex Anjelica Huston out of the blue to offer assistance after learning her home was in an evacuation zone during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
Huston, 73, shared in a new interview that she had been fleeing her ranch in the Sierra Nevada mountain range with her housekeeper and pets when the “phone just rang out of nowhere.”
“And it was him,” she recalled to People on Thursday. “It’s always a comfort when he calls.”
The “Witches” star said Nicholson, 87, wanted to make sure she was OK and asked whether she needed a place to stay, which she regrettably declined.
“It was heartbreakingly sweet,” she told the magazine. “I’ve gone back over it several times in my head, and I think next time I’d accept the invitation.”
Although Huston’s house “came very, very close” to burning down, she previously told the Guardian that it thankfully was left standing.
The “Addams Family” star, who dated Nicholson on and off for 17 years, noted that she had not seen the “Shining” star in a while.
“Life gets in the way,” she explained to People. “Also, for some reason, they’ve been doing endless rerouting and road work near his house, so it takes hours to get to him, and that’s always irritating. I always managed to be late going to see him, which is very irritating for him.”
However, Huston noted that their decades-long friendship is still very “important” to her.
During her February interview with the Guardian, the “Crimes and Misdemeanors” actress said she can always count on Nicholson despite their rocky past.
“That’s the bottom line with he and I — when the chips are down, he’s there,” she told the outlet.
As for why she stayed with him for so many years despite his infidelities, Huston simply explained that she “loved him.”
“I think in the world that I was living in, it wasn’t disrespectful,” she said. “It was how he was, and it wasn’t so personal. I think as soon as I clocked that, it was all right, I knew how to protect myself. It didn’t make me happy, but I knew what I was doing.”
The two met at one of Nicholson’s house parties in 1973 and quickly hit things off. After years of dating — and even starring together in 1985’s “Prizzi’s Honor” — their relationship came to a definitive end in 1990 after the “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” star fathered a child with another woman.
Huston went on to marry Robert Graham two years later. The sculptor died in 2008 at age 70.
Nicholson, for his part, never settled down; his last public relationship was with actress Lara Flynn Boyle, which ended for good in the early 2000s.
Although Nicholson and Huston sparked reunion rumors in 2014, they seemingly decided they were better off as friends.
