Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson: a passionate love story

If you are a film fanatic, you are undoubtedly familiar with the work of Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston, two of the biggest star of their era.

You may not know that Nicholson and Huston were also once a couple. In fact, they were together for nearly 20 years! Click on to read the story of how Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston fell in love and why the duo split, leaving one with a broken heart.

In an excerpt from Anjelica Huston's memoir, shared with Vanity Fair, Huston revealed that she met Nicholson in 1973, not long after breaking it off with her troubled and controlling boyfriend, photographer Bob Richardson.

Angelica and Jack met at his house when the actor hosted a house party to celebrate his birthday. Huston told celebrity reporter Chrissy Iley that the two immediately hit it off.

Jack Nicholson was known as a bit of a 'playboy' at the time and for having a complicated love life.

However, the connection that he shared with Angelica Huston was unique. So much so that PEOPLE magazine even reported that Nicholson was "passionately" in love with Huston.

However, despite his claims, Nicholson had a hard time being faithful. In an article she wrote for Vanity Fair about their time together, Huston said that Jack did little to hide his affairs.

Huston wrote: "Occasionally, I'd find a piece of female apparel - once a jacket of mine turned up on a girl in the street - or I'd find some hand cream or a trinket might get left behind in the soap dish."

Even though the couple appeared to be going strong, Anjelica had to deal with Nicholson's infidelities for years.

To say Anjelica was patient with Jack would be an understatement. The relationship was put into great jeopardy in 1980 when Jack had an affair with Winnie Hollman (pictured), a Danish model, and she had his child in 1981.

For many, their partner getting another woman pregnant would have been the last straw. However, Anjelica stuck by Nicholson for several more years.

The end of their love affair would come in 1989, when once again, Jack got yet another woman pregnant, actress Rebecca Broussard.

In her 2014 Vanity Fair essay, Huston explains how one day Nicholson told her over dinner that even though Broussard was pregnant, he wanted things with Angelica to remain the same.

This time though, Angelica had had enough. In the essay, Huston recalls how she told Jack, "There's only room for one of us women in this picture, and I am going to retire from it."

Jack and Angelica had had an on-again-off-again kind of relationship, so it wasn't 100% a clean break, but by 1990, the couple was finally through, and Jack was devastated.

Jack Nicholson spoke about the breakup in an interview with The Telegraph in 2015 and said it was one of the "toughest periods" of his life.

Nicholson said, "I was annihilated emotionally. That was probably the toughest period of my life. I'm childish, and I did make a mistake."

Some anonymous sources close to Nicholson claim that the actor was "afraid of dying alone" in his Hollywood mansion, according to The Mirror UK.

Even though the actor was known for being a ladies' man and allegedly slept with up to 2,000 women in his prime, according to The Sun UK, his love life in his later years has been less than stellar.

Despite causing the man she once loved so profoundly so much pain, Anjelica Huston still believes she made the right choice.

In an interview with The Guardian in 2014, Anjelica spoke about the breakup and what would have happened had she stayed with Jack. She said, "I would probably have been miserable."