Samuel L Jackson’s favourite khard rock band: “You’ll love them when you hear them”
Who do you think is the highest-grossing actor of all time?
Silly question. It’s Samuel L Jackson, of course. Yes, the man who held up the cafeteria with a briefcase in Pulp Fiction all those years ago has brought in a staggering sum total of no less than $27 billion from his films, putting him on top of the movie star pile.
Granted, a good deal of that comes from his role as Nick Fury, the Director of Shield in Marvel’s Avengers movies, but he was popping up in blockbusters way before that, including Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park back in 1993.
Add in the Star Wars prequels between 1999 and 2005, the third Die Hard movie, four more Tarantino films and the Kingsman franchise, and you have an actor who has consistently appeared in more of the biggest movies around, and for longer than anyone else.
He overcame addictions to alcohol and cocaine as a young theatre actor living in New York City at the end of the 1970s and had a tough decade before a meeting with director Spike Lee set him on the path to stardom. He appeared in two movies by Lee, followed by a role in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas in 1990. That wasn’t enough to save him from heroin addiction, however, and it was only thanks to his family checking him into rehab that he was able to recover well enough to take part in two Tarantino projects: firstly, True Romance, and then his iconic hitman role in Pulp Fiction.
One of cinema’s most iconic lines has to be his chilling delivery of the Bible verse ‘Ezekiel 25:17’ – just before he casually takes someone out. That moment ended up on the film’s soundtrack, which was a major success, and it’s just one example of how Jackson’s ties to pop music have run through his entire career.
As recently as last year, he appeared in Kendrick Lamar’s video for ‘Not Like Us’, and he has performed songs for the soundtracks of 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard and the 2008 comedy Soul Men.
While Jackson’s music of choice would appear to predominantly be hip-hop (he recently told of a Spotify playlist he has featuring Usher, Trick Daddy and NWA), he’s not averse to some full-on guitar music as he revealed to the AP not long ago.
Asked which group his Marvel character Nick Fury would listen to, he replied, “I would go with a band that we grew up with called Mother’s Finest. They were the only Black hard rock band in America at that time. They were our favourites, you’ll love them when you hear them.”
Mother’s Finest was formed in Atlanta, Georgia, some 53 years ago, and has played on ever since, albeit with several different line-ups, and Jackson revealed that he’d hung out backstage with the group at a concert in 2023. The band has released more than ten studio albums and isn’t afraid of a bit of controversy, with titles including Black Radio Won’t Play This Record.
Jackson, meanwhile, is currently appearing in Afterburn with Marvel co-star Dave Bautista, a movie about a huge solar flare that takes out the world’s technology and has several projects coming up, including a film about the US President’s armoured car called The Beast and an as-yet-untitled JJ Abrams movie to add to his hefty bankroll.
