The one thing Samuel L Jackson hates being called: “Get another job
Samuel L Jackson is a lot of things to a lot of people. To fans of Quentin Tarantino, he has been a hitman, a cowboy, a gun runner, and even an organ player (special points if you remember which film that is). To the Marvel faithful, he is Shield’s Nick Fury, the one-eyed superspy responsible for putting together the Avengers. Then there are his many, many, many other roles. Seriously, he has a lot, far too many to mention here.
That’s all just Jackson in a fictional sense, however. In the real world, his accolades are somehow even more impressive. He’s somehow not an Oscar winner, but he has won acting prizes at the BAFTAs and both the Cannes and Berlin film festivals. He’s also the highest-grossing actor of all time, his films having raked in an estimated $27billion all told. He’s put that money to good use, too, as he is a supporter of numerous good causes and charities.
In short, Jackson truly is one of the greats. However, he has an odd relationship with that idea, as he revealed when speaking to Entertainment Weekly at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) annual film festival. Speaking as part of a virtual panel (remember those), the star seemed happy to talk about his life and career, but recoiled at the term ‘legend’, saying that it “disturbs” him when people call him that.
“Legends are people who accomplish things that can’t be accomplished by other people, or did something that’s super extraordinary,” he explained, “I just persevered through hard work and doggedness to get where I am”. Unfortunately for the often foul-mouthed thespian, the reason he was giving this interview in the first place was because he’d just been honoured with the festival’s ‘Legend of Cinema’ award. Somebody probably should have said something a lot sooner.
Jackson has always had a unique perspective on fame. In this very same interview, he describes the act of movie stars not wanting to watch their own films as “bullshit”, calling out, saying, “get another job, because that’s what it is, it’s a look-at-me business”. This is probably because he took a rather unconventional route to Hollywood. Having originally studied marine biology at university, Jackson only began regularly appearing in movies in his early 30s, which is relatively late. His mainstream breakout performance in Pulp Fiction didn’t come until 1994, when he was 45 years old. He’d lived a whole life before anyone ever knew who he was, so of course, he’s going to have a different viewpoint to someone who’s spent their whole life in the limelight.
This unique backstory is one of the many reasons why Jackson suits the word he hates so much. He clawed his way into a business that is notoriously unfriendly to outsiders, going against all conventional wisdom to not only reach the top, but stay there. It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to call him humble—he knows his worth, and there’s nothing wrong with that—but even with all the success he has achieved, he still has the self-awareness that is so often lacking in major celebrities.
Sorry, Sam, but you are a legend, whether you like it or not.
