Samuel L. Jackson, the activist who became the highest-grossing actor in history

If you hear “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee,” you would probably think of Jules Winnfield, the fast-talking hitman from Pulp Fiction, rather than the biblical prophet Ezekiel. The former was the character that put Samuel L. Jackson on the map, no less than the highest-grossing actor in the history of Hollywood thanks to a career that mixes blockbusters and auteur cinema. Jackson has managed to combine his time in the mammoth franchises of Star Wars and Marvel with his work with prestigious directors such as Milos Forman, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh or Paul Thomas Anderson and, of course, Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee, the filmmakers who have marked his career. Despite this, he has never won an Oscar, but he has earned the title of “coolest guy in Hollywood.” To understand why, you only have to look at any of his photos. If intangible qualities such as elegance or charisma were to be defined, he would be a good candidate to point to.

For one thing, he is a survivor in his own right. In the late 1980s, his wife (actress LaTanya Richardson, to whom he has been married for more than 40 years) and daughter Zoe found him passed out on the kitchen floor. He had spent the previous night drinking tequila and consuming crack that he had cooked himself. It was the culmination of a long path of addiction that had begun in college. His wife gave him an ultimatum. “I threatened to leave him if he didn’t see the rehab through. I knew I couldn’t leave this boy I admired so much. But I resented him too. I hated it when he slurred his words. A wife hates to see her husband be weak,” she told Vanity Fair.

Jackson admitted his addiction and spent 28 days in rehab. “I never thought I was an alcoholic; I just drank all my life. But I was a blackout drinker: I would wake up in places and not know how I got there.” His biggest fear was not knowing how to act sober because he had never done it, although no one seemed to notice or care as long as it worked. “I was a fucking drug addict and I was out of my mind a lot of the time, but I had a good reputation. Showed up on time, knew my lines, hit my marks.”

While in rehab, he stayed in touch with Spike Lee. In his film Jungle Fever (1991), there was a role that suited him perfectly: Gator, a crack addict. “I know I’m going to be good,” he told Lee. “Just wait for me.” He was so skinny and emaciated that the security guards on the set threw him out, thinking he was a local drug addict. Jackson had a feeling that his performance would be talked about, and when he heard that it was premiering at Cannes, he tried to get Lee to invite him to go with him, but the director opted to take the movie’s main stars. In the end, the film didn’t win anything (it was the year of the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink), but Jackson’s performance made such an impact that the festival, despite not awarding supporting actors, created a special award for him.

Lee picked it up, although according to the actor’s recollection, it took him a year to hand it over. At the time, they were arguing about how much he was going to be paid for a role he was to play in Malcolm X, but they couldn’t come to an agreement and Jackson left the project. The Cannes award had changed everything.

While Lee, with whom he has worked on five films, has been important in his career, Tarantino has been no less so and Jackson particularly values his ability to define characters with his dialogue. After the premiere of Reservoir Dogs (1992), for which he had auditioned, he approached Tarantino at the Sundance Festival to tell him that he liked the film, but that it would have been better with him in it. That’s how Jules came into his life. The success he had longed for materialized when he was already over 40, something he is grateful for. He knows that if his time in the spotlight had come when he was an addict, he would have burned out.

“But things happen when they are meant to happen, not before. Being famous as a young person today would be crazy. I manage my social networks myself and I still have to think before hitting the send button. Imagine the crazy things I would do today as a young man. They would be huge scandals. Fame fucks everything up in that respect.,” he told EL PAÍS a few years ago.

Luck began to smile on Jackson: while he was waiting for a role in the much maligned but redeemable Waterworld (1995), he was called to co-star in the third part of Die Hard, the role he has enjoyed the most because he considers it represents the viewer’s gaze. Bruce Willis, who already knew what it was like to become a star overnight, understood the relevance that the film would have for Jackson. When Pulp Fiction was released, they went to Cannes together to see it for the first time and both knew it was going to be a success, but Willis, more experienced in Hollywood subplots, knew that Tarantino’s film would not be the one to make the difference. “Yes, this is good and will make you recognizable, but Die Hard with a Vengeance will make you a star; it’ll change your life.”

“And it’s true,” Jackson admitted. “It was the highest-grossing film in the world that year. That was game-changer.” Aware of the prevailing racism in Hollywood he knew there was only room in the big movies for one African American actor and he wasn’t first in line. “Casting Black actors is still strange for Hollywood. Denzel [Washington] gets the offer first. Then Danny Glover, Forest Whitaker and Wesley Snipes. Right now, I’m the next one on the list,” he declared in 1993, but a year later, he was no longer just another option; he was the only one. The roles were being written for Samuel L. Jackson.

Swearing or acting

It was the triumph of a boy raised in particularly tough conditions. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Jackson was the son of an alcoholic father whom he only saw twice in his life and a mother who worked from dawn to dusk, and he also had a stuttering problem that earned him ridicule from his classmates in the segregated schools he attended. He tried to control it by swearing, but his aunt offered him a more elegant solution: acting.

At university, Jackson became involved in political issues. He attended Morehouse, where Martin Luther King had studied. Jackson was one of the ushers at his funeral. Shortly afterwards, he took part in a hostage-taking of members of the board of trustees to demand improvements at the university. He was suspended for two years. As a civil rights activist, he was targeted by the FBI. When his family began to fear for his life, they sent him away from the city. His mother wanted him to study for a degree, but he wanted to be an actor.

Jackson has done theater, television and a lot of cinema, including the kind that seems designed purely to cover mortgages on mansions, but Jackson makes these movies out of true conviction that cinema is entertainment. “I’m only going to do things that make me happy,” he says. “The last thing you want to do is do something just for money.” That’s why he especially loves entries in his filmography like Snakes on a Plane (2006), a film he begged to be in because he fell in love with its title, or The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), an underrated action film in which he shared the lead role with a wild Geena Davis.

Jackson likes to make the kind of movies that made him fall in love with cinema when he was a kid: genre movies, action movies, entertainment. “I’d rather put a smile on people’s faces than make them cry.” He’s an anomalous actor who admits he enjoys watching his own movies, while most Hollywood stars claim they can’t stand watching themselves on screen. He’s also not too bothered when someone asks him to recite some of his most famous lines, or the unmistakable delivery of the word “motherfucker” that is inseparable from his career. He even says he has a video on his phone that compiles them all. It must be a very long one because in 2014, The Huffington Post had already counted more than 174.

His extreme loquacity can cause him problems, but it has also given him joy. In one of his interviews on Seth Meyers’ late-night show, he said that he would love to be part of the Star Wars universe and soon received a call from Skywalker Ranch. George Lucas’ latest intallment was not yet written, but there would be a role for him. He told them he would do anything; he was willing to be a storm trooper even if no one would ever know who was under the helmet. The surprise came when, during the costume fitting, they gave him a tunic and boots. “Wait! I’m a Jedi?!” he shouted. Not just a Jedi, but the great Mace Windu. It was Jackson himself who decided that the light on his saber would be purple, something that was accepted without reservation. That light saber, which he keeps at home, had another peculiarity: the props department had inscribed “B.M.F.” [Bad Motherfucker] on the switch.

The fact that he enjoys blockbusters doesn’t mean he doesn’t also want to enjoy the awards that are rarely associated with these types of productions. He has an honorary Oscar that he received the year of Will Smith’s slap. His wife was in charge of explaining to a surprised Liv Ullman what was going on. He doesn’t consider it a minor fact that it’s honorary: “I earned it. I worked for it. My name’s on it.” Nor does he deny how disappointed he was to miss out on the statuette for which he was nominated for Pulp Fiction. His expression upon learning that the winner was Martin Landau is legendary, as is the perfectly identifiable “shit” that escaped from his lips.

Although he is no longer in the FBI’s sights, he remains a prominent activist and philanthropist who makes no secret of his dislike of Donald Trump. “As soon as I hear ‘Make America Great Again,’ I go, ‘When are we talking about again? Are we talking about back when we had apartheid?’ I grew up in segregation in Tennessee. I went to school with Black kids ‘cause we couldn’t go to school with white kids. I saw Klan marches and Klan rallies. So I know what America used to be. When I hear them say, “Let’s make it that again,” it just makes my blood boil,” he told Vulture.

Like his characters, Jackson doesn’t mince his words. “People need to start understanding that the economic gap is crazy. I pay an enormous amount of taxes, and it’s fine because I know I should. But why can’t we get billionaires to pay their fucking taxes? If those motherfuckers paid their taxes we’d solve a whole bunch of shit. And they would still be richer than every motherfucker walking around them.” The M word isn’t just Jackson’s favorite on-screen expression.

About to turn 76, Jackson remains in enviable physical shape despite claiming to love junk food as much as Jules did, and he has no plans to retire. On November 22, Netflix is releasing The Piano Lesson, an adaptation of an August Wilson play he performed on Broadway more than 40 years ago. Now he is the venerable patriarch while his old role is played by John David Washington, the son of his close friend Denzel Washington. And in January, he gave his fans great excitement by confirming that Mace Windu was not dead. Jackson wants to rekindle the saber and he doesn’t care if it’s in a new film or one of the franchise series. There’s plenty of life in the motherfucker yet.

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