Jackson, Samuel L. 1949(?)–

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Samuel L. Jackson 1949(?)–

Actor

“I never get tired of acting because I have a passion for it,” Samuel Jackson declared to Paul B. Cohen of the L.A. Village View. “Every time I have an opportunity to do it, I will do it.” Despite occasional encounters with the implicit racism of Hollywood, he has managed to get cast “color-blind” more often than many of his black colleagues. His versatility and professionalism have been Jackson’s keys to survival. As director Phillip Noyce—who worked with the actor on Patriot Games —told the New York Times, “Sam has a remarkable connection with the cinema audience.”

Likewise, Jackson is much beloved by those who enjoy live drama. Unlike film work—which tends to offer little immediate reward for the actor—Jackson has acknowledged to Cohen that “theater is such a healthy exchange of energy between the audience and the actors.” He added that he can sense audience members “sitting forward, sighing, or getting carried along with the momentum of what we’re doing, so it’s very invigorating.”

Jackson spent years reinvesting that energy in role after role, until finally erupting into widespread public notice in the late 1980s. Before then, his lengthy résumé of film appearances consisted mostly of low-profile character parts until his award-winning performance in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever moved him to the top of casting directors’ lists. He went on to appear in increasingly varied features with two goals in mind—stretching his range and returning to stage, the arena in which he got his start.

Jackson grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with his aunt, who was a schoolteacher. His urge to perform emerged while he was still quite young. “As a kid I loved Treasure Island,” he informed Jean Oppenheimer of the LA. Village View. “My favorite pirate movie was The Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster. When I was a kid we played pirates in our neighborhood, not sissy stuff like Captain Hook but serious pirates.” He also participated in rowdy neighborhood recreations of favorite westerns, substituting bicycles for the horses. When he wasn’t pretending to be a high sea rogue, he acted in his aunt’s school plays. However, he didn’t seriously participate in the theater world until he was in college.

Trustees a Captive Audience

Jackson attended the historically black-oriented Morehouse

At a Glance…

Born a 1949; raised in Chattanooga, TN by an aunt (a schoolteacher) and his mother. Married LaTanya Richardson, an actress, c 1981; daughter, Zoe. Education; Received Dramatic Arts degree from Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA, c. 1970s.

Cofounded Just Us theater company and member of Negro Ensemble Company, Atlanta, c 1970s; appeared in New York stage productions, including A Soldier’s Play, 1981; The Piano Lesson, 1987; Sally/Prince, 1989; The District Line, 1990; Two Trains Running, 1990; and Home. Appeared in Seattle Repertory production of Fences; appeared in Coast Playhouse, Los Angeles production of Distant Fires, Î 993. Made film debut in Together for Days; appeared in numerous films, including Ragtime, 1981; Raw, 1987; School Daze, 1988; Sea of Love, 1989; Do the Right Thing, 1989; Mo’ Better Blues, 1990; Def by Temptation, 1990; Coodfeilas, 1991; Jungle Fever, 1991; lumpin’ at the Boneyard, 1992; White Sands, 1992; Patriot Games, 1992; True Romance, 1993; Menace II Society, 1993; National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I, 1993; Amos 8c Andrew, 1993; Jurassic Park 1993; Against the Wall, 1994; Assault at West Point, 1994; The Court Martial of Johnson Whittaker, 1994; Fresh, 1994; and Pulp Fiction, 1994.

Awards; Best Supporting Actor award at Cannes Film Festival and New York Film Critics award for Jungle Fever, 1991.

Addresses: Home —Harlem, NY. Agency —International Creative Management, 8942 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211.

in Atlanta, Georgia, but in order to major in drama he had to take all his theater classes at the college’s sister school, Spellman. There he met LaTanya Richardson, an actress whom he would later marry; there too, he made his adult performance debut in the darkly satirical Weill-Brecht classic, The Three Penny Opera, making up for his lack of singing acumen with his acting skills. Meanwhile, offstage was becoming radicalized by the burgeoning black liberation movement of the early 1970s. Student anger at the lack of African-American studies and the institution’s control by a white governing body caused him to participate in an action that involved locking a few Morehouse trustees in a room until the insurgents’ demands were met. For having had a hand in things, Jackson and some of his comrades, were suspended but later reinstated.

Focusing on what would soon become his career, Jackson helped start the Just Us theater company in Atlanta, but he and Richardson ultimately left for New York City in 1976. “All I know is, we pulled into [Greenwich] Village at night, and everyone on the street looked really bizarre,” Jackson told Michael Angeli of the New York Times. “We were going to live with some friends on Barrow Street. What we didn’t realize was that it was Halloween, and we were in the middle of a parade.” Though he didn’t begin his own parade of acting roles until some years later, he did start working in theater almost immediately, despite a short stint as a security guard.

For the next several years, Jackson appeared in various plays. Film work was sometimes offered, as when he appeared in 1981’s Ragtime, but it was when he was appearing onstage in A Soldier’s Play the same year that he began making real connections. He first met fellow African-American actor Morgan Freeman, who greatly encouraged him, then a young film student named Spike Lee. Lee came backstage to introduce himself. Jackson recollected to the New York Times’ Angeli. “He told me he was a Morehouse alumnus, that he was at NYU [New York University] film school, da-da-da. He was going to, um, be a filmmaker. He said when he started to make films, he would love for me to be in his movies. It was, like, I had my dream, and he had his—a surplus of reality there, you know what I mean?”

Made Hot by Fever

Lee’s dream came true, and Jackson appeared in several of the writer/director’s films, including School Daze in 1988, and the following year’s Do the Right Thing. Jackson observed that Lee’s tendency to use the same actors in different films lent an esprit de corps to the productions. “Bill Nunn, Giancarlo [Esposito]—we knew each other from Morehouse, where we did plays together. There’s something to be said for the ensemble feeling, for getting to know other actors and having a feeling for working with them,” Jackson explained to Angeli. “And doing Spike’s films, that was the one thing we all had to look forward to every year—knowing we were going to get together again. Same crew, same actors.” Jackson also landed character roles in features by other directors; in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Jackson worked in The Exorcist III, Coming to America, Sea of Love, and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. But Lee was the creative force behind the film that made Jackson’s reputation, Jungle Fever.

In that 1991 production, Jackson played Gator, the crack-addicted brother of Flipper Purify, played by Wesley Snipes. Jackson brought an explosive charisma and unpredictability to the portrayal; Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called him “a blistering actor in an unforgettable role.” When the film debuted at the Cannes film festival, the judges named Jackson the best supporting actor. The award was a double honor because the Cannes judging had never before extended to that category, but Jackson’s performance left an indelible mark on those who would rate him. Besides winning at that prestigious affair, he also received a New York Film Critics award. Jackson even won over the toughest critic of all—himself. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction accorded by the showing was that for once, as he told Lena Williams of the New York Times, “I don’t want to go back and fix it.”

A few months after Jungle Fever’s release, Jackson was surprised to find that his increased visibility and all the acclaim made some filmmakers think he was unavailable except at high salaries. He emphasized to Williams that he was “not out of anyone’s range yet.” True to his word, he proceeded to take small roles in such offbeat films as Juice and True Romance, among others. When Jackson was sent the script for the thriller White Sands, he assumed he was being considered for the part of the villain—a role eventually bagged by Mickey Rourke. “Then they call me back and say no, you’re Meeker, the FBI agent. What? I had to go back and read it again,” Jackson admitted to Premiere’s Veronica Victoria Chambers. “And I like the guy [Meeker] a lot. He’s not obviously bad or obviously good. It was a stretch from Gator to that character. And I really would like to display the fact that I have that range.” The film’s director, Roger Donaldson, praised Jackson to Chambers, saying “He’s got enormous resources as an actor. He’s extremely talented technically. Sam can do something one take, then go back and build on it. He’s spontaneous, but he’s well trained…. And he’s a nice guy.”

“Call Your Agent”

Hollywood did not need to be heavily persuaded about Jackson’s willingness to take on different genres. He shared above-the-title billing in two broad comedies, Amos & Andrew and National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I. Unfortunately, critics trashed both 1993 films. Entertainment Weekly’s review of Amos & Andrew, for example, consisted largely of career advice for the actor. Their reviewer wondered, “did Samuel L. Jackson really have to follow up his mesmerizing, out-on-the-edge performance as a homeless crack addict [in Jungle Fever] with National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I and the imbecilic mistaken-identity farce Amos & Andrew?” The unequivocal pan concluded by urging the actor to “call your agent—and fire him.”

Despite such misfires, Jackson continued working regularly in the 1990s, appearing as a technician in the box-office champ Jurassic Park, as one of Harrison Ford’s allies in Patriot Games, and in an ensemble role in Menace II Society. Patriot Games director Noyce told the New York Times that Jackson, despite having his performance severely edited, “made so much out of so little that the audience imagined he had a greater participation than he actually did.”

Interestingly, Jackson found one drawback to having such a good reputation. To his dismay, “my agents and my managers tell me they don’t want me to audition, [but instead to] just go in and take a meeting,” he noted to Paul B. Cohen of the LA. Village View. “I find that really bizarre sometimes,” he continued, insisting that “It’s a lot easier for me to go in there and take the character that they have on this page and show them what I think of this character and just do it in an audition.”

Whether through auditions or meetings, Jackson has consistently been hired. In the early 1990s, he appeared in three made-for-cable television dramas: Against the Wall, about the 1971 Attica Prison riots; Assault at West Point, in which Entertainment Weekly alleged Jackson and co-star Sam Waterston were guilty of “ostentatiously chewing the scenery”; and The Court Martial of Johnson Whittaker.

In 1994, Jackson was cast as a killer in writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, an ultraviolent thriller boasting what Jackson described to Cohen as “one of the best scripts I’ve read in a couple of years.” The plumb role contained “four to five page [long] speeches … and that’s something you don’t normally do in a film,” though he had had occasion to do so on stage. Jackson had earlier appeared in such prestigious New York productions as August Wilson’s two acclaimed pieces, The Piano Lesson and Two Trains Running. His appreciation for the dialogues Wilson had written was obvious. Speaking to Cohen, Jackson reflected, “August writes three-hour plays, and when I was doing Piano Lesson —I was the original [protagonist] Boy Willie before [actor] Charles Dutton did it—that character talks for about two hours and ten minutes in a three-hour play….”

Back to the Stage

Despite the plethora of motion picture work he obtained in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson longed to appear onstage again. Once he did, he was pleasantly surprised to find a new environment in regards to many playwrights. In a New York Times interview, Jackson observed that “the black acting community is relatively small. Especially in New York theater. The funny thing is that when they used to cast black roles, everybody from age 20 to 50 was called because they had no idea what kind of black person they wanted for the role. That kind of let you know that they sort of didn’t have a clue as to who these people are.”

Though Jackson assumed he would have to maintain himself in New York City for theatrical roles, he was pleasantly surprised at the opportunity to be in the 1993 working-class play Distant Fires in Los Angeles. “Everybody’s very concerned about the production as a whole and not about their own performances,” he enthused to Cohen. He similarly told Premiere’s Chambers “I always want to get back to theater to make sure that I’m still an actor. You have to convince people who are actually sitting there looking at you that you’re doing what you’re doing, without all the trappings of reality around you.”

Trappings notwithstanding, Jackson admitted to L.A. Village View writer Jean Oppenheimer that he still wants to play a pirate, as well as a gunslinger, as he had done in his neighborhood as a child. Yet he has never lost sight of the practical necessities of his career. His managers, he told Angeli, have attempted “to get me to calm down, to learn patience, but an actor’s greatest job is getting his next job.” Indeed, Samuel Jackson seems, with each new performance, to guarantee a versatility and commitment that never go out of style.