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About Samuel L. Jackson:
Actor Samuel Leroy Jackson was born in the United States on December 21, 1948. Being one of the most well-known performers of his generation, he is the highest-grossing actor of all time thanks to the nearly $27 billion in global box office earnings from the films he has starred in.
In 1980, Jackson made his stage debut at The Public Theatre in Mother Courage and Her Children. Coming to America (1988), Juice (1992), True Romance (1993), Menace II Society (1993), and Fresh (1994) are a few of Jackson’s early cinematic appearances. In addition, he received worldwide acclaim for his roles as Nick Fury in 11 Marvel Cinematic Universe films, starting with Iron Man (2008), and as the Jedi Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005). He has also appeared in other high-profile motion pictures.
Quick Facts:
- Birth Name: Samuel Leroy Jackson
- Birth Date: December 21, 1948
- Birth Place: Gabon, United States
- Gender: Male
- Career: Actor, Producer
- Most Known For: Samuel L. Jackson, one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood, has starred in several movies, such as “Jurassic Park,” “Pulp Fiction,” and the Marvel and Star Wars superhero series.
Early Life:
On December 21, 1948, Samuel Leroy Jackson—the only child of Elizabeth Harriett and Roy Henry Jackson—was born in Washington, D.C. Chattanooga, Tennessee, is where he was raised. His father was an alcoholic who passed suddenly in Kansas City, Missouri, far from the family home. Jackson had only ever met him twice in his lifetime. His mother, a factory worker who subsequently purchased supplies for a mental health facility, raised him.
After attending many segregated institutions, he received his diploma from Chattanooga’s Riverside High School. When he was younger, he started to stammer and discovered how to “pretend to be other people who didn’t stutter”.
He went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, with the intention of earning a degree in marine biology at first. He changed his major to acting after becoming a member of a local acting club in order to get more points in a class. He was one of the founders of the Just Us Theatre and graduated in 1972.
Jackson was an early movie lover who often went to the neighbourhood theatre to see movies and was exposed to the complex themes surrounding Black representation on screen. When Jackson enrolled in Atlanta’s historically Black Morehouse College and became more deeply immersed in the Black-power struggle, his early recollections stayed with him.
When he locked several board members in a building for two days in 1969, his junior year, in protest of the lack of Black representation on the board of trustees, he was immediately suspended from the college. In 1972, he returned to the institution and graduated with a BA in theatre. He started working as a social worker in Los Angeles when he was suspended.
Career:
Early Career on Stage and meeting Spike Lee:
Following his time in college, Jackson teamed up with LaTanya Richardson, his future wife, at Spelman College, Morehouse’s sister institution, to form the Black Image Theatre Company. They went throughout the nation doing skits for mostly white audiences that were marked by a ferocious blend of humour and fury.
Jackson and Richardson relocated to Harlem, New York City, in 1976 as they ran out of steam for politically motivated theatre and wanted to pursue acting careers outside of such rigidly racially defined boundaries. He started his acting career with Off-Broadway shows such as Samm-Art Williams’s Home and Richard Wesley’s The Mighty Gents, which was an adaption of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage. Additionally, he was hired to fill in for Bill Cosby during rehearsals for The Cosby Show.
Jackson met fellow actor Morgan Freeman during his time working on Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play in 1981. Freeman became a great friend and encouraged Jackson to pursue a career in acting. Jackson also met Spike Lee, a film student at New York University, who was enthusiastic about Jackson’s performances and encouraged him to feature in Jackson’s upcoming films. These encounters changed Jackson’s life. Jackson gave his approval and fulfilled his promise, showing up in a number of Lee’s early motion pictures, including as School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and Mo’ Better Blues.
Jackson’s association with Lee paid off, as his portrayal of the drug-addled Gator in Jungle Fever garnered critical attention and garnered him some well-deserved accolades.
Jackson kept landing tiny roles in movies like Juice and True Romance.
He also portrayed an FBI agent in the suspenseful thriller White Sands, showcasing his remarkable versatility and ability to give each character a unique twist. By giving brief but impactful cameos in Menace II Society and Patriot Games, he triumphed over two Hollywood bombs, National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I and Amos & Andrew. He also had a significant supporting role in the popular film Jurassic Park.
Pulp Fiction, Star Wars, and Snakes on a Plane:
After being known as one of Hollywood’s most diligent performers, Jackson was given the opportunity to play the most important part of his career in Quentin Tarantino’s instant cult masterpiece, Pulp Fiction, in 1994. Working from any actor’s dream script, Jackson portrayed the murderer Jules Winnfield, a fierce speaker whose speech could take up five pages. With his passionate portrayal, he both scared and moved the audience, emerging as the enigmatic moral core of the psychologically disordered movie. For the part, he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Jackson went on to star in a number of high-profile Hollywood productions, such as the action-thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight and John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, but he also kept taking part in indie projects, such Steve Buscemi’s Trees Lounge. Distant Fires marked his eagerly anticipated comeback to the stage in 1993.
Jackson had appearances in the shark thriller Deep Blue Sea (1999) and Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). He returned to the character of Mace Windu, a Jedi knight, in Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005).
The well-known actor had a busy year in 2000, costarring with Tommy Lee Jones in the military drama Rules of Engagement and the adaptation of the iconic smash Shaft from the 1970s. In M. Night Shyamalan’s spooky movie Unbreakable, he also collaborated with Bruce Willis.
Following his performance alongside Ben Affleck in the 2002 film Changing Lanes, Jackson took on the lead in the Coach Carter biography released in 2005. Jackson returned to work with Phantom Menace co-star Hayden Christensen in Jumper in 2008, having featured in both Black Snake Moan and the cult hit Snakes on a Plane the year before.
Career Expansion with Marvel’s Nick Fury, Django Unchained, Kong: Skull Island and Recent Roles:
As Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jackson was only getting started when he was declared the highest-grossing film actor. His persona first arose in the closing credits of the 2008 film Iron Man, and he later made a reappearance in the follow-up, Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Winter Soldier (2014), The Avengers (2012), Age of Ultron (2015), Infinity War (2018), and Endgame (2019), as well as Captain Marvel (2019). Jackson has also made appearances in other shows, including Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Fury.
Jackson collaborated again with Tarantino on Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Chi-Raq (2015) in addition to his lucrative work with Marvel. For Kong: Skull Island (2017), he played a military leader with a distinct style. In 2019, he returned to two of his previous roles with the Unbreakable sequel Glass and a reimagined Shaft.
In 2019, Jackson also adopted a new role: he became the first celebrity to voice Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, giving users the choice of “explicit or non-explicit” responses to their queries. With the successful theatrical debut of The Last Full Measure, a war drama starring Peter Fonda in his farewell role, the veteran actor kicked out 2020 on a high note. Later, he costarred with Anthony Mackie in the MCU biography The Banker.
He co-presented the television documentary series Enslaved in 2020 alongside investigative journalist Afua Hirsch. Alongside Chris Rock, he also had an appearance in the 2021 film Spiral: From the Book of Saw. In the Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels, as well as the Disney+ series Secret Invasion, he played Nick Fury once more. The next year, Jackson appeared in a small part in the espionage comedy Argylle (2024), which was directed by Matthew Vaughn.
Personal Life:
Jackson met actress and producer LaTanya Richardson while attending Morehouse College, and the two were married in 1980. Zoe, the couple’s daughter, was born in 1982.
Despite being bald, Jackson loves donning wigs for his movies. He scored his first bald job in The Great White Hype after he started losing his hair, but he had to keep shaving his head in order to have wigs produced for him as he continued to land bald roles.
