The bizarre contractual demands of Samuel L. Jackson
There are few Hollywood actors quite as beloved as Samuel L. Jackson, the man who has worked with everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Steven Spielberg and has magnetised fans from several different generations. An icon of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing Nick Fury in countless contemporary movies, Jackson has also received plenty of critical acclaim, being nominated for an Academy Award back in 1995 for his performance in the Palme d’Or winner Pulp Fiction.
Emerging onto the scene in the 1970s with a spattering of minor roles, Jackson’s fortunes wouldn’t change until the late 1980s, when he enjoyed two collaborations with some of the era’s finest minds. The first came in 1988 when he worked with the comic director John Landis, taking a minor role in Coming to America just one year before he worked alongside the filmmaking icon for the seminal American classic Do the Right Thing.
Enjoying collaborations with Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tony Scott and Joel Schumacher throughout the remainder of the 1990s, by the dawn of the new millennium, Jackson was in an excellent position to thrive. This was helped significantly when George Lucas cast him in a major role in his highly-anticipated Star Wars prequel trilogy, setting him up for consistent success in the 21st century.
There was only one demand that Jackson made before taking on the project, however, he wanted a purple lightsaber so that he would stand out from the crowd during fight sequences. Jackson’s wish was granted, with this request merely being one of many contractual demands during his career.
Proof of his demanding nature can be seen in his production agreements, where he’s contractually obligated to play golf twice a week while filming
“I can be a hard taskmaster for some directors,” the actor admitted during an interview with The New York Times, “I’m at that point where I can say: ‘Uh, you know, that’s not going to be in the movie, right? We already got it, we got it when we did this, that and that. I’m not going to do that’”. “Then they want to call my agent,” he added before strictly stating, “Call whoever you want, ’cause I’m not going to do that”.
More recently, Jackson raised concerns regarding the AI use of his own image. “People just started worrying about that? I asked about that a long time ago,” Jackson stated while discussing being “scanned” on the set of George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
Continuing, he added, “Ever since I’ve been in the Marvel Universe, every time you change costumes in a Marvel movie, they scan you…Ever since I did Captain Marvel, and they did the Lola project where they de-aged me and everything else, it’s like, ‘Well, I guess they can do this anytime they want to do it if they really want to’…“Future actors should do what I always do when I get a contract, and it has the words ‘in perpetuity’ and ‘known and unknown’ on it: I cross that shit out. It’s my way of saying, ‘No, I do not approve of this’”.
