The only director Samuel L Jackson would “walk through fire” for
For an actor who is a household name and has racked up hundreds of credits, Samuel L Jackson had a late start in movies. Born in 1948, it wasn’t until his late 30s that he finally started to gain traction on the big screen. He did not, however, come to the profession late in life. As a kid, he developed a stutter and found that the best way to avoid it was to pretend to be other people. In college, he founded an all-black acting company called Just Us Theatre and graduated with an acting degree.
After years of toiling in the theatre and earning some cash on the side by working as a stand-in for Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show, his talent was becoming more and more apparent. In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, he was picking up small roles in major films, including Do the Right Thing, Goodfellas, and Jurassic Park. By the time he became a household name, he’d been working in movies for two decades and had dozens of credits to his name.
Of course, Jackson’s breakout commercial role came in 1994 when he starred as Jules Winfield in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. As one of the few actors who can make Tarantino’s writing sound natural and even spontaneous no matter the film, his performance as the chatty assassin nabbed him a Bafta award and Oscar nomination and marked the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership. The actor has gone on to appear in four of the director’s subsequent films and has spoken in glowing terms about their collaboration.
“There’s so much to say about Quentin,” he said. “The passion, the knowledge, the joy and enthusiasm while he’s working, the sheer cinematic encyclopaedia that he is, is just joyful. The poetry of his words is infectious. I love speaking his dialogue.”
He went on to talk about the collaborative nature of working on Tarantino’s sets, saying, “He makes us go to dinner together to form relationships. He has big beer busts for the crew on Friday. He has film nights where he’ll show some quirky films he wants everyone to see. He’s also open to suggestions all the time. I’d walk through fire for Quentin.”
This is high praise coming from an actor who has worked with some of the greatest directors of his generation. Scorsese, Spielberg, and Spike Lee are just a few of the auteurs he’s collaborated with over the years, but it’s Tarantino who has given him some of his most unforgettable roles. Following Pulp Fiction, Jackson appeared as the ruthless, goateed gun runner Ordell Robbie in Jackie Brown, a smoking pianist in Kill Bill: Vol II, an elderly enslaved man who is willing to fight for his enslaver to the bloody end in Django Unchained, and a Civil War-era bounty hunter in The Hateful Eight.
The admiration is mutual. For Tarantino, Jackson is a permanent part of his ensemble. “I definitely often write for Sam Jackson,” he told an interviewer back in 2003. “I know his rhythms. I feel like he can turn my lines into poetry.”
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