Jack Nicholson portrayed Randle Patrick McMurphy in the 1975 film adaptation, earning him an Academy Award for Best Actor.

[1] Randle Patrick McMurphy is an Irish American brawler found guilty of battery, gambling and statutory rape.

During his short stay at the hospital, McMurphy forms deep friendships with two of his fellow patients: Billy Bibbit, a manchild who has a stutter, whom Ratched has dominated into a suicidal mess; and Chief Bromden, a selectively mute Native American.

Richard Gray considers McMurphy "swaggering, bold, and with an incorrigible sense of humor" and an "authentic Irish rebel ... who offers the inmates the example and chance of independence.

[5] When Ratched returns to the ward following the attack, she is bruised and fearful, and no longer has the same measure of control over her patients due to McMurphy exposing her vulnerabilities.