Seventeen years ended over dinner. Jack Nicholson looked across the table and said, “Someone is gonna have a baby.” Anjelica Huston knew it wasn’t her. She had tried. Endometriosis made it impossible. The someone was Rebecca Broussard, a model and actress twenty-six years younger who had appeared in The Two Jakes. Nicholson said he would stand by the pregnancy. He also said he didn’t want anything to change between them. Huston answered that there was only room for one woman in the picture, and she was retiring from it. She stayed composed at the table. Later the anger arrived. A Playboy article appeared, describing another of Nicholson’s encounters. Huston went to his bungalow at Paramount. He was coming out of the bathroom. She hit him—hard—about the head and shoulders while he ducked and bent. She later wrote that she went at him like a prizefighter. They spoke on the phone afterward. He said she had left him bruised all over his body. She said he deserved it. They laughed. That Christmas he sent a pearl-and-diamond bracelet that had once belonged to Ava Gardner, with a note: “These pearls from your swine. With happiest wishes for the holidays — Enjoy — Yr Jack.” Huston walked away. By 1991 she was Morticia Addams in The Addams Family and the Grand High Witch in The Witches. She already had an Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor. In 1992 she married sculptor Robert Graham. They lived in the three-story house he designed in Venice, California, until his death in 2008. She has said she did what she wanted and did it with sureness; she was not a wilting flower. Nicholson has still called her the love of his life. Their story was never simple. She chose to leave a relationship that diminished her, and she built a life on her own terms. ❤️