The movie that compensated for Samuel L Jackson’s unfulfilled dream: “This was an opportunity”
Think of a big movie franchise and chances are Samuel L. Jackson will have been in it at some point. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’s the eyepatch-sporting S.H.I.E.L.D Director Nick Fury. In ‘Star Wars’, he’s Mace Windu, the only Jedi master special enough to get a purple lightsaber. XXX, The Incredibles, and the Unbreakable trilogy are just a handful of franchises Jackson has appeared in more than once.
At this point, it’s easier to name a cinematic institution that Jackson hasn’t been a part of. In conversation with The Guardian, the highest-grossing actor of all time revealed that there was one series he’d never done, but was dying to be a part of – James Bond. Sadly, he didn’t hold out much hope of ever landing a role in the long-running spy series, saying, “I don’t think I’ll ever get to be in a Bond film.”
Jackson was promoting his movie Kingsmen: The Secret Service (another franchise), in which he played squeamish tech billionaire psychopath Richard Valentine. The movie is heavily inspired by Bond, depicting an underground network of spies who make use of typically British items like umbrellas and Saville Row suits as gadgets and weapons. It’s inspired the comic book series of the same name and has produced, at the time of writing, two sequels.
“I felt like this was an opportunity to play a really great Bond villain,” Jackson said of the role. While Valentine certainly has the scope of a classic Bond baddie – he plans to wipe out most of humanity using violence-inducing SIM cards – the ‘Kingsman’ series is too bloody and silly to draw direct comparisons to the classic tales of espionage. Valentine is played extremely camp, with a deathly fear of blood and a pronounced lisp, which was an intentional decision by the actor. “I stuttered when I was a kid,” he said. “People laughed at me when I talked. Smart people.”
It’s not a controversial thing to say that Jackson would make an incredible Bond villain. Obviously, he’s a fantastic all-round actor, but he’s got that presence, that melodrama that is needed for an enemy worthy of taking on the world’s greatest secret agent. Strangely, though, in all the years he’s been battling evil, Bond has very rarely come up against an American.
Most of Bond’s foes come from continental Europe. Look at the Daniel Craig films, for example. Mads Mikkelsen is Danish, Mathieu Almaric is French, Javier Bardem is Spanish, Christoph Waltz is Austrian. Rami Malek, who played Lyutsifer Safin in No Time to Die, is American but comes from an Egyptian background. The character is supposed to be from a Turkish-speaking area of Russia. The Living Daylights features Brad Whittaker (Joe Don Baker) as a secondary villain, but that’s about it when it comes to the nation’s representation.
Maybe Jackson’s nationality has prevented him from being a Bond villain, or maybe he’s simply too famous or too busy to commit to something on that scale. Still, he would absolutely shine in a role like this, and there’s no doubt that people would flock to see such an iconic performer take his place in film history. If Jackson is still interested and the producers at Eon are willing to give him a call, then there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen one day.
