The crucial advice Samuel L Jackson would give to his younger self
It’s been a long time since Samuel L Jackson had to worry about where his next paycheque was coming from, but that doesn’t mean his career has played out anything like he imagined.
Thanks to his roles in a string of colossal franchises, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, The Incredibles, and his recurring collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, Jackson has become the highest-grossing actor in the history of cinema with a filmography that’s earned almost $28 billion at the box office.
While a lot of that success can be attributed to the aforementioned properties, he’s nonetheless continued to knock out memorable performances in everything from Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Django Unchained to Glass, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Die Hard with a Vengeance, as well as his recurring partnerships with Spike Lee on School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Jungle Fever.
Remarkably, he’s only ever been nominated for a single competitive Academy Award, and he looked suitably furious when The Usual Suspects‘ Kevin Spacey took home the prize for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the expense of his iconic Jules Winnfield. On the plus side, Pulp Fiction served as the mainstream breakthrough that turned him into a household name, made him a star, and opened the doors for decades to come as one of the industry’s most popular and in-demand talents.
There was a gap of almost a quarter of a century between his acting debut and his big break, though, which led Jackson to muse on his misconceptions over how things were supposed to work. Everyone lucky enough to climb to the top of the ladder gets there in their own way, but as he explained to The Hollywood Reporter, he presumed there was a traditional path that could be followed directly from one point to the other.
When asked about the advice he’d offer his younger self, Jackson was caught in a reflective mood. “I would have to tell myself that this job doesn’t work the way I thought it did,” he said. “It’s not a normal job. I thought this was like every other job, you start in the mailroom and you do something else, and you get higher and higher.” Not the most far-fetched concept in the world, then, but the star’s idea of upward momentum didn’t manifest in the way he’d hoped.
After starting in theatre, he believed “somebody will see me and I’ll get a commercial, and then after that commercial I’ll do soap opera, and then I’ll do a regular TV show, and then I’ll become a movie star.” He did get around to the final stage of his master plan, but not without conceding that it took him 25 years to figure out it wasn’t the way things worked in acting.
