One 1987 role saved Samuel L Jackson’s life and brought him full circle: “Here I am again”
If box office success was a direct reward for how long you’ve been making films, then Samuel L Jackson would probably still be at the top of the tree, because he has now been at it a long old time, as far back as 1972, would you believe.
That was his first proper movie role, in a blaxploitation film called Together for Days, in which he played the lead character, but it didn’t lead to immediate success; instead, Jackson moved from Atlanta to New York City in order to try to breakthrough in theatre on Broadway. That took him a few years to achieve, and once he managed it, he also jeopardised it by developing an addiction to alcohol and cocaine, which cost him parts in two plays.
At the start of the 1980s, Jackson was sober enough to appear in plays such as A Soldier’s Play, which also featured a young Denzel Washington, and he had also been introduced to Spike Lee, who would go on to cast him in some pivotal roles, including Do the Right Thing in 1989. But two years before that, Jackson landed a part in a play that would prove life-changing for him, and one that he would come back to several decades later.
The Piano Lesson was a 1987 play by August Wainwright, written in order to explore African-American history in the US, more specifically, the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. It uses a family’s piano as a centrepiece, with a brother and sister arguing over what to do with the valuable instrument, whether to sell it for land or keep it as an heirloom.
Jackson had one of the lead roles in the production when it opened in New York that year, but missed out on the play moving to Broadway due to not being sober, becoming incredibly frustrated by being a mere backup to Charles S Dutton, who would later win a Golden Globe nomination for the TV adaptation of the play. But Jackson eventually seized his chance when he returned to the same part some 36 years later.
He reminisced about The Piano Lesson to the LA Times, stating, “You know, this play changed my life because it’s the play that made me crazy enough that I got sober when I understudied it on Broadway”.
On being an understudy, he added, “That made me crazy listening to it every night backstage as opposed to hearing myself doing it. The difference in the performances… Then he [Dutton] won a Tony, and then he got the Pulitzer. It got me to that place where I made myself crazy enough that I got drunk enough and passed out enough that my wife put me in rehab. Which fixed my life. And here I am again.”
The subsequent year, Spike Lee cast him in the musical comedy School Daze, followed up with a role in Do the Right Thing, by which point, Jackson was well on his way to Hollywood, and a memorable role in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas in 1990 cemented it, since going on to become the highest-grossing male actor in cinema history, starring in movies and franchises that have brought in more than $15billion at the box office, including the likes of Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Kingsman and the Avengers series.
The Piano Lesson was also made into a Netflix-backed movie in 2024 with Jackson again taking a lead role, this time as the elderly uncle of the boy character he first played all those years ago.
