LOVE, HEALING AFTER CANCER & HERICONIC CAREER

LOVE, HEALING AFTER CANCER & HER ICONIC CAREER

- BRIANNE TRACY

Anjelica Huston has held many titles throughout her nearly six-decade career: Hollywood royalty, Oscar winner, Addams family matriarch. Her latest? “Donkey advocate,” she says in her signature purr over the phone from her ranch near the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. “There are several groups here who look after wild donkeys, and I’m one of them. Donkeys are not the showiest, but they're some of the sweetest animals I’ve ever met. I think they could always use more publicity.”

Huston, 73, has been living full-time at her ranch since January, when she evacuated her Los Angeles home amid the wildfires. “It turned out to be okay, but it’s taken this long to remediate because I had damage and several windows blown out,” she says. “Not terrible but significant.”

While fleeing the fires with her housekeeper and pets, Huston was surprised to receive a call from her ex Jack Nicholson, 87—whom she dated on and off from 1973 to 1990—asking if she was okay and if she needed a place to stay. “It was heartbreakingly sweet,” she says. “I’ve gone back over it several times in my head, and I think next time I’d accept the invitation.”

After a difficult few years, Huston is holding tight to the relationships she cherishes most. In 2008 she lost her husband of 16 years, sculptor Robert Graham. Then, shortly after the premiere of her film John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum in 2019, she received a cancer diagnosis, something she’s never spoken about publicly before. “That was a very serious moment for me,” she says. “It made me conscious of places I shouldn’t go. One of those places was taking life too seriously and not being able to rejoice in what I do have.”