Nicholson says he's looking for love

Jack Nicholson, the legendary ladies' man, says he'd like to fall in love again. "I never minded being a fool for love," the 70-year-old Oscar winner tells AARP The Magazine. "It's nice to have a place to be foolish. Ask any old friend of mine, they'll say, `Jack's pretty smart, but in this area the man is beyond the pale. Don't ask him anything about love. Or if you ask him, don't listen to him.'"

Nicholson says getting older has changed the way he woos women.

"I can't hit on a girl in public like I used to," he says. "I never thought words like `undignified' would come into my own reflections on myself, but I can't do it anymore."

Nicholson, whose past flames include Anjelica Huston and Lara Flynn Boyle, explains: "I feel uncomfortable. I don't think anybody cares what I do in these areas, but it feels a little bit off to me."

He says he'd date a woman close to his age — or younger.

"In fact, every year I like to cover a very broad spectrum," he says. "But you know? I've been single for quite a long time. I've been invested in my teenage children" with ex-girlfriend Rebecca Broussard. (He was married to Sandra Knight in the 1960s.)

Nicholson says nearly all his contemporaries tell him they want "that one last big romance."

"I don't do a lot of original screenwriting anymore, but if I were, I'd find a way to make this the dramatic narrative of a movie, because it's one of those silent yearnings of my own age group," he says.

Nicholson co-stars with Morgan Freeman in "The Bucket List," about two terminally ill patients on a final fling. The film is the winner of "Best Buddy Movie" in AARP The Magazine's Movies for Grownups awards, which will be presented Feb. 4 in Los Angeles.

Nicholson has received 12 Oscar nominations, winning for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good as it Gets."