Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed more than $27 billion worldwide, making him the highest-grossing actor of all time. In 2022, he received the Academy Honorary Award as a cultural icon whose work has resonated across genres and generations.
Jackson made his professional theater debut in Mother Courage and Her Children in 1980 at The Public Theatre. From 1981 to 1983, he originated the role of Private Louis Henderson in A Soldier’s Play off-Broadway. He also originated the role of Boy Willie in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre. He portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in the Broadway play The Mountaintop (2011). He returned to Broadway in the 2022 revival of The Piano Lesson, playing Doaker Charles, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Jackson’s early film
Jackson’s early film roles include Coming to America (1988), Juice (1992), True Romance (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), Menace II Society (1993), and Fresh (1994). His early collaborations with Spike Lee led to greater prominence with films such as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), and Jungle Fever (1991). Jackson’s breakout performance was as Jules Winnfield in Quentin Tarantino’s crime drama Pulp Fiction (1994), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He has continued to collaborate with Lee and Tarantino, including prominent roles in Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015).
He also gained widespread recognition as the Jedi Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005), and as Nick Fury in 11 Marvel Cinematic Universe films, beginning with Iron Man (2008), as well as in the Disney+ series Secret Invasion (2023) and What If…? (2021–2024), and guest-starring in the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–2014). Jackson has provided his voice for Lucius Best / Frozone in the Pixar films The Incredibles (2004) and Incredibles 2 (2018).
He has also acted in a number of big-budget films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), A Time to Kill (1996), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000) and its reboot (2019), XXX (2002), Coach Carter (2005), Snakes on a Plane (2006), Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Glass (2019).
Early life, family and education
Jackson was born on December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the only child of Elizabeth Harriett and Roy Henry Jackson. He grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His father lived away from the family in Kansas City, Missouri, and later died of alcoholism. Jackson met him only twice during his life. He was raised by his mother, a factory worker and later a supplies buyer for a mental institution, as well as by his maternal grandparents, Edgar and Pearl Montgomery, and extended family. Jackson partially descends from the Benga people of Gabon and became a naturalized citizen of Gabon in 2019. He developed a stutter during childhood and learned to “pretend to be other people who didn’t stutter.”
Jackson attended several segregated schools and graduated from Riverside High School in Chattanooga. He played the French horn, piccolo, trumpet, and flute in the school orchestra. Initially intent on pursuing a degree in marine biology, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was a cheerleader. After joining a local acting group to earn extra points in a class, he discovered an interest in acting and switched his major. Before graduating in 1972, he co-founded the Just Us Theatre.
After Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Jackson attended King’s funeral in Atlanta as an usher. He then traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to join an equal rights protest march. In 1969, Jackson and several other students held members of the Morehouse College Board of Trustees hostage, demanding reform in the school’s curriculum and governance. The college eventually agreed to change its policy, but Jackson was charged and convicted of unlawful confinement, a second-degree felony. He was suspended for two years for his actions and later returned to the college to earn a BA in drama in 1972.
While suspended, he worked as a social worker in Los Angeles. He later returned to Atlanta, where he met with activists in the Black Power movement. He began to feel empowered with his involvement in the movement, especially when the group began buying guns. However, before he could become involved in any armed confrontations, his mother sent him to Los Angeles after the FBI warned her that he would be in danger if he remained with the group. In a 2018 interview, he denied having been a member of the Black Panther Party.
Box-office performance
Throughout the 1990s, a box office–tracking company determined that Jackson appeared in more films than any other actor, grossing $1.7 billion domestically. By 2011, the films that featured Jackson as a leading actor or supporting co-star had grossed a total of $2.81 to $4.91 billion at the North American box office. This placed him as the seventh-highest-grossing lead actor and the second-highest-grossing actor overall. In 2009, Guinness World Records stated that Jackson was the world’s highest-grossing actor, with $7.42 billion generated across 68 films. As of 2022, according to Golden Globes data, this total has grown to more than $27 billion across 152 movies, making him the highest-grossing actor and the second-highest-grossing person in film overall behind Stan Lee.
Audiobooks
- 2011: Adam Mansbach: Go the Fuck to Sleep, publisher: BRILLIANCE CORP, ISBN 978-1-4558-4165-3
- 2014: Chester Himes: A Rage in Harlem, publisher: BRILLIANCE CORP, ISBN 978-1-4915-1908-0
Personal life
In 1980, Jackson married actress and producer LaTanya Richardson, whom he met while attending Morehouse College. The couple have a daughter named Zoe, born in 1982. In 2009, they started their own charity to help support education. Jackson has said that he watches his own films in cinemas: “Even during my theater years, I wished I could watch the plays I was in—while I was in them! I dig watching myself work.” He also enjoys collecting action figures of the characters he portrays in his films, including Jules Winnfield, Shaft, Mace Windu, and Frozone.
Jackson is known for his use of the word motherfucker. He has explained he utilizes the word to get through a speech block as he still has days where he stutters. A fundraising campaign of his, Motherfunder, alludes to this reputation.
He is bald but often wears wigs for his roles. He said about his decision to shave his head, “I keep ending up on those ‘bald is beautiful’ lists. It’s cool. You know, when I started losing my hair, it was during the era when everybody had lots of hair. All of a sudden, I felt this big hole in the middle of my afro. I couldn’t face having a comb over so I had to quickly figure what the haircut for me was.” His first bald role was in The Great White Hype. He usually gets to pick his own hairstyles for each character he portrays. He poked fun at his baldness the first time he appeared bald on The Tonight Show, explaining that he had to shave his head for one role, but then kept receiving more and more bald roles and had to keep shaving his head so that wigs could be made for him. He joked that “the only way [he’s] gonna have time to grow [his] hair back is if [he’s] not working.” He is noted for often wearing a Kangol hat in public.
Jackson is an avid golfer. He has a clause in his contracts that allows him to play golf during film shoots. He has played in the Gary Player Invitational charity golf tournament to assist Player in raising funds for children in South Africa.
He is a keen basketball fan, supporting the Toronto Raptors and the Harlem Globetrotters. Jackson has supported English football team Liverpool FC since appearing in The 51st State, which was shot in Liverpool. He also supports Irish football team Bohemian FC. He is a fan of the Atlanta Falcons.
He was granted Gabonese citizenship in 2019 after the results of a DNA test claimed to link him to the country’s Benga ethnic group. Jackson stopped drinking alcohol after having problems with addiction.
Filmography
Main article: List of Samuel L. Jackson performances
Awards and honors
Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Samuel L. Jackson
Over the course of his career, Jackson has received various awards for his performances on film. At the 44th Cannes Film Festival he received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991). He received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for his performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). He also received Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for the performance as well.
At the 48th Berlin International Film Festival, he received the Silver Bear for Best Actor for his leading performance in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997). In 2021, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named Jackson as one of its Academy Honorary Award recipients as “A cultural icon whose dynamic work has resonated across genres and generations and audiences worldwide.” At the 12th Annual Governors Awards in 2022, friend and actor Denzel Washington presented Jackson with his Oscar.
Notes
Jackson is listed as the second-highest-grossing person in film of all time behind Stan Lee, who was not an actor but earned first place due to the cameo appearances he made in most of the blockbuster films adapted from comic book characters he created.
