Danny DeVito Says Friend Jack Nicholson Is Doing ‘Great’ (Exclusive)

Danny DeVito is giving a rare update on his longtime friend Jack Nicholson, whom he first worked with 50 years ago and still retains a close bond with.

“I just saw Jack a couple weeks ago — it was his birthday a month ago, and he’s great,” DeVito tells PEOPLE exclusively while reflecting on his experience making his breakthrough film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest, in advance of Fathom Entertainment’s 50th anniversary re-release of the drama on July 13 and 16.

Public sightings of Nicholson, 88, have grown increasingly rare — though he’s been largely absent from his once-fabled court side seat at Los Angeles Lakers games, the Academy Award winner did make a notable on-camera appearance during the live broadcast of SNL50: The Anniversary Special in February to celebrate five decades of Saturday Night Live.

But behind the scenes, DeVito, 80, says he’s stayed in regular contact with his friend after bonding on the set of Cuckoo’s Nest over their shared New Jersey roots. Indeed, DeVito’s next film before the sitcom Taxi vaulted him to TV stardom was in the Nicholson-directed 1978 comedy Goin’ South. The two would also appear onscreen together in James L. Brooks’ seriocomic, 1983 Best Picture winner Terms of Endearment, the 1992 biopic Hoffa directed by DeVito and the 1996 Tim Burton comedy Mars Attacks!.

DeVito recalled how he and the other young actors in the Cuckoo’s Nest cast — including Christopher Lloyd and Brad Dourif — were quietly “in awe” of Nicholson when they convened at a working state sanitarium in Portland, Oregon, to shoot the film. Nicholson was emerging as a respected actor, a major movie star and a cultural icon all at once, and his performance in Cuckoo’s Nest would cement his reputation, ultimately earning him his first Oscar for Best Actor (out of 12 career nominations, he scored additional wins for Best Supporting Actor in Terms of Endearment and again for Best Actor in 1998’s As Good as It Gets).

“We’re in the presence of this guy who’s really at his moment, where he was breaking out into the big time,” DeVito recalled of the initial encounter with Nicholson, who was hot off a string of knockout turns including Easy Rider, Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail and Chinatown.

Despite Nicholson’s increasing profile, DeVito says the actor remained deeply grounded, having launched his career in low-budget fare like the films of Roger Corman.

“There was no need for an icebreaker,” remembers DeVito. “He was immediately just so embracing…He started out exactly the way everybody else did, where he couldn’t get a job. It was like he came to Hollywood and he was going to just write and direct, and then Easy Rider comes along after the Corman stuff… So he was in our milieu, and he was always just as open and genuine, and we all felt it immediately.”

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“Of course, he was doing it because he’s that way,” DeVito notes, “and he was also doing it because that had to be, because we had to be all joined at the hip in that movie, and we had such great performances.”

DeVito had been an admirer of Nicholson’s since the actor’s earliest work, and while he planned to keep it to himself during initial production, “he and I have a little history, because we were born in the same hospital in New Jersey.” DeVito recalls how his sisters worked in the same local hair salon circuit as Nicholson’s older sister. “When I was a kid, I always heard about this really handsome guy from Neptune who went out to California and became a movie star,” he remembers.

DeVito’s cover — “I didn’t want to ruffle the waters; I didn’t want to add anything to the experience at that time” — was blown early on when his longtime friend and former roommate Michael Douglas, who was making his first foray into producing on the film, spilled the beans to an enthusiastic Nicholson. “Jack came running around the corner: ‘Ahhhh! You’re from Asbury Park?’” DeVito laughs.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would go on to become only the second film in history, after 1934’s It Happened One Night, to claim all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Director (Milos Forman), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman). The film is today universally considered a masterpiece.

A new 4K restoration of the film from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films will be released in 1,000 theaters nationwide by Fathom Entertainment on July 13 and 16. Tickets are available now.