Meet Jack Nicholson’s estranged daughter Tessa Gourin: the actor’s 30-year-old offspring looks just like him, is also an actress, and would rather be called a ‘nepo baby’ than ‘illegitimate’
- Tessa Gourin is the youngest of actor Jack Nicholson’s 6 children – and the only one who is completely estranged from him
- The aspiring actress – who is learning from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s acting coach – describes herself as ‘collateral damage’ in her mum and dad’s relationship, and hates being called ‘illegitimate’
Lara Flynn Boyle – the Twin Peaks actress who dated Jack Nicholson for seven years – recently admitted she still talks to the actor, despite reports he has become a recluse, per People. Now 87, Nicholson hasn’t been in a film since 2010’s How Do You Know and never goes out any more, according to US media.
However there’s one woman for whom Nicholson has always been elusive – his daughter Tessa. The 30-year-old has never had a relationship with the famous actor, and despite reportedly being told not to talk about it as a child, has been opening up about what it’s meant to her. Here’s what you need to know about Tessa Gourin.
Who is Tessa Gourin’s mum, and how did she meet Jack Nicholson?
Tessa’s mum is a woman named Jennine Gourin, who was working as a waitress in the early 90s when she met the actor, per People. “I was the result of a womanising actor’s fling with someone who was then a young waitress,” Tessa wrote in an essay for Newsweek last February. Jennine went on to have a career in New York property according to The Daily Beast, and raised Tessa as a single mum.
Why doesn’t Jack Nicholson want to know his daughter?
While Nicholson has never publicly acknowledged his daughter, per The Daily Beast, he reportedly funded her private school education, and there’s no denying she is the spitting image of The Shining actor. But she says she’s never really been given a “concrete answer” why he doesn’t want to be a part of her life.
“I formed my own opinion, she told the outlet. “He’s a complicated person, and I think my mum fights her own demons, and with the combination of the two, I was simply collateral damage.”
She’s struggled with her identity her whole life
