The one thing Samuel L Jackson can’t stand doing onscreen: “It’s just this one time”
Given his incredible track record of being in countless great films, Samuel L Jackson can be forgiven for having some specific demands.
In addition to being one of the highest-grossing actors of all time, Jackson has been working nonstop for over 40 years and has a pretty jaw-dropping filmography, thanks in large part to appearing in more franchises than any actor ever.
He always delivers a memorable performance, regardless of the quality of the film, such that it is impossible to imagine any other actor taking over his part, and he is also responsible for characters that will remain an integral part of film history forever, such as Jules in Pulp Fiction or Ordell Robbie in Jackie Brown.
He is also a far more versatile actor than he is given credit for, as the outspoken, angry characters he’s often known for only represent a fraction of his oeuvre. Between playing a complex father in Eve’s Bayou, a brilliant chess player in Fresh, a dangerous bounty hunter in Django Unchained, and a genius scientist in Jurassic Park, he can be a true chameleon who disappears into any of his parts. In recent years, he’s generated a new generation of fans based on his performance as Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As the director of Shield who gathers the Avengers to defend Earth, Fury made his first appearance in the original Iron Man in a jaw-dropping post-credit scene. While he played a slightly larger role in Iron Man 2, Jackson got an opportunity to get deeper with the character in The Avengers, which was written and directed by Joss Whedon, who was incredibly praiseworthy towards Jackson as an actor, but noted that he had some specific things that he didn’t want to do.
“I told him how I saw Nick Fury and his role in the movie, and was like, ‘Is there anything you’re looking for or anything you particularly want to avoid?’,” Whedon recalled, “He was like, ‘…Thank you for asking, I don’t want to run. Don’t make me run a lot’. Then, on set, he pointed to the page, like ‘It says, ‘Fury runs’. ‘I know, it’s just this one time’.”
Fury does have one major running scene at the end of The Avengers in which he attempts to stop a bomber from nuking New York City to prevent the Chitauri invasion, but it fails and forces Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark to take the missile into space to destroy the alien spaceship.
The scene is included because it’s a rare moment in which Fury has to get in on the action, as he is primarily a character who works in the shadows, and it’s also understandable that Jackson, who was 63 at the time that The Avengers was released, felt cagey about doing so many physically demanding scenes.
Jackson’s reluctance certainly wasn’t out of laziness, as he has more than proven his merits as an action star, becoming the only sidekick worthy of Bruce Willis’ John McClane in Die Hard with a Vengeance, and participating in one of the most memorable lightsaber duels in Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith. To his credit, he has still managed to be involved in some fun action scenes as Fury, including a particularly memorable car chase in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
