Brando and Nicholson

Los Angeles, May 15: Jack Nicholson, who costars with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon in director Martin Scorsese’s upcoming gangster movie The Departed, has purchased the Beverly Hills-area home of his longtime friend and neighbour Marlon Brando for $5 million.

Brando, who won best actor Academy awards for his roles in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Godfather (1972), died in July 2004 at age 80. At the time, Nicholson called his friend “a monumental artist like Michelangelo or Picasso” and predicted that “his influence will be there long into the future”.

Brando and Nicholson, who costarred in The Missouri Breaks (1976), were neighbours for more than 30 years. Brando had lived in his house since 1960.

His 12-room home, built on a hilltop in 1954, has three bedrooms and four bathrooms in slightly more than 3,000 square feet, according to public records. The house is on almost an acre and has a pool.

Christie’s plans to auction off items from the house on June 30 in New York.

Brando spent much of his life as a recluse, staying in the house or on his French Polynesian atoll of Tetiaroa, a cluster of a dozen islands about 26 miles north of Tahiti. Brando bought the atoll in 1965 after filming Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) in French Polynesia.

Nicholson, 68, won best actor Oscars for his roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and As Good as It Gets (1997). He won a best supporting Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983). The Departed is being filmed in New York. A release date hasn’t been scheduled yet.