Samuel L Jackson names his greatest-ever death scene: “Everyone remembers this one”
Every actor will have ambitions when they get into the movie business. Naturally, most people’s first ambition is to forge a stable career that allows them to make a living from their art. Following that, some will have ambitions to become an action star or dramatic powerhouse; some will dream of winning an Academy Award; others will dream of working with the best directors in the industry. Some ambitions are much more unique, though – such as Samuel L Jackson and his deep, abiding desire to have one of his characters meet a very specific fate.
In his career, Jackson’s characters have shuffled off this mortal coil in many gruesome ways. He was shot in the back of the head in his own bedroom by Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas; impaled by a prosthetic knife leg in Kingsman: The Secret Service; shot in the crown jewels in The Hateful Eight; blasted off a Coruscant balcony by Force lightning in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith; blown up with dynamite in Django Unchained; and splattered on the ground after an ill-timed swan-dive off a skyscraper in The Other Guys.
Each and every one of these deaths is memorable in its own way. Some are shocking and emotional, while a few are surprisingly bloody and hilarious. However, none of them scratched the particular itch that Jackson had in mind for his ultimate cinematic death scene. Instead, he envisioned something much more monstrous punching his ticket. “I’d always wanted to be killed in a movie by something big that was chasing me,” Jackson told The Guardian in 2025.
Indeed, when Jackson signed up for Steven Spielberg’s iconic blockbuster Jurassic Park in 1993, he thought he was about to achieve his dream of being gobbled up by something big, but unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. “I missed out on my death scene in Jurassic Park,” he groused, “because a hurricane destroyed the set in Hawaii, so I never got to go down and get eaten by a velociraptor.”
In the late ’90s, though, Jackson finally got his wish when he fielded a phone call from the director who helmed The Long Kiss Goodnight, one of Jackson’s favourite movies that he ever worked on. “When Renny Harlin told me he was making a horror movie with killer sharks and that I was going to be the first person to die, I said, ‘Great!'” Jackson grinned. “It was a good idea – once he’d killed me, it meant any character’s life was up for grabs.”
In Deep Blue Sea, Jackson’s Russell Franklin is presented as one of the more important characters, and at one point, when the chips are down and it seems like everyone is facing certain death, he gives a rousing speech. It’s a classic moment of rallying the troops, and the audience thinks Franklin is about to lead everyone to safety – but then a shark suddenly leaps out of the water and chomps down on him, before dragging his bloody carcass beneath the waves.
“I’ve had very varied deaths in movies, but everyone remembers this one,” Jackson smiled. “It was great being at the premiere, having not told any of my friends, and seeing them react.” The star also appreciated how Deep Blue Sea subverted the trope of Black characters dying first in horror movies because even though he exited early, LL Cool J’s character is one of the last left alive. “That felt like a small victory,” he said.
Ultimately, the bravura death scene in Harlin’s super-silly but super-fun shark extravaganza satisfied Jackson’s on-screen death ambitions. He now had a death scene that his childhood self – who had acted out his own over-the-top James Cagney-esque deaths at home – could declare his greatest ever.
