“My dad and I don’t talk that much about acting,” said the actor, 32, who added, “It’s important for me to find my way”
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Ray Nicholson is his real-life dad Jack Nicholson‘s doppelganger in Smile 2.
In the gory new horror sequel, 32-year-old Ray has a supporting role as a movie star named Paul Hudson who is connected to the troubled past of the lead character, pop singer Skye Riley, played by Naomi Scott.
Ray sports a creepy smile in some scenes, harkening back to his Oscar-winning father Jack’s iconic grin and stare in another horror flick, The Shining.
Smile writer-director Parker Finn, who has written an entire essay about The Shining being his favorite horror film of all time, told The Hollywood Reporter that he took inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s famous “stare” for the smiling in the new films.
“Sometimes the actors show up clearly really prepared, like I can tell they’ve been at home studying in the mirror, and other times it takes a little more coaching,” he said of their smirking close-ups.
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“I find what you want to do is smile actually in a friendly way; you don’t want to over-exaggerate it, you don’t want to strain your face, but it’s all about disconnecting the eyes from the smile, and then about how you position the head.”
He added, “There’s a bit of a head tilt that happens; there’s the famous ‘Kubrick Stare,’ we sort of leaned into that idea, and then it becomes all about the filmmaking tools.”
Ray told the outlet he did his smiling scenes in one single take. As he said to Deadline, he spent his life around his movie-star father, observing him and taking notes.
“We’re very different people,” said Ray, who is one of Jack’s six kids. “… Obviously, I love him. He’s my inspiration. I ate dinner with him every night. I studied it, that’s how I learned to be a human being. So of course we’re gonna be kind of similar.”
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The star, who has followed in Jack’s Hollywood footsteps in previous roles in Fear the Night and the series Panic, added, “I love him. He’s also my hero. I’m the luckiest kid in the world.”
Ray said on CBS Mornings that he doesn’t frequently discuss acting advice with his father. “My dad and I don’t talk that much about acting. … I think it’s important for me to find my way,” he said.
Ray joked that his mom Rebecca Broussard once joked to him, “‘Ray, you were such a beautiful boy, and then you started to look like your father.'”