COVER STORY
Samuel L. Jackson’s Next Act
The superstar actor riffs on staying busy, becoming Gabonese, the art of quiet giving—and being forced to do stupid s---
Samuel L. Jackson, photographed for AARP in Los Angeles on June 21, 2024
ON A QUIET morning in a conference room on Hollywood Boulevard, I await the arrival of Samuel L. Jackson. It is a little like waiting for the president of the United States; someone from an advance team announces his imminent arrival, as though Air Force One is touching down. When he sweeps into the room—tall and magnetic, with a confident walk and resplendent in a satiny blue Adidas tracksuit, a white T-shirt and a bright red bucket hat—he seems to change the quality of the air by his presence.
He and I, two Black men, are meeting up for a work engagement today, on Juneteenth, the irony of which does not escape us. “I’m supposed to be somewhere barbecuing,” he chides me in mock accusation. I try to deflect. “Hey, listen, I didn’t choose this date!” which, of course, is true. With celebrities of his stature, you sort of take the dates their teams offer. “Yes, you did, you wanted this,” he teases me, deadpan.
And it was here that I understood one thing about Samuel L. Jackson. If he makes a joke, it’s because it’s something that maybe needs saying. In other words, he’s a little impish.
Indeed, some of Jackson’s best work is arranged around this very specific quality of messing with you, making you wonder how serious he is and what exactly he’s serious about. Consider his standout performance as the wry but murderous hit man Jules Winnfield in 1994’s Pulp Fiction who baffles would-be victims with a series of non sequiturs and a Bible verse before committing the awful deed. Or as the sinister arms dealer Ordell Robbie in Quentin Tarantino’s follow-up, Jackie Brown, whose affable but subtly mendacious smooth talking to his supposed friend, the thief Beaumont Livingston, right before he kills him goes down as one of the more chilling setups in cinema history.
In fact, there are very few actors who can titrate the qualities of menace and charisma the way Jackson can. In his latest projects, the playwright August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson on Netflix and the Peacock limited series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, he leverages this quality to reach two stellar but quite opposite performances. In The Piano Lesson, he reprises the role of the quiet patriarch Doaker, a part he played in the Broadway production two years ago, directed by his wife of 44 years, LaTanya Richardson Jackson.
In Fight Night, Jackson plays real-life underworld boss Frank Moten, who leads with menace, but you never quite know when or where it’s coming from. Sporting a small Afro streaked with gray and a pair of throwback ’70s glasses (has any performer made better use of the hair and wardrobe department than Jackson?), Moten threatens with a steady ease that makes us feel the existential dread with which Kevin Hart’s fast-talking protagonist—a small-time hustler who gets in way over his head—must contend.
Jackson’s oeuvre is as varied as the hairstyles he’s sported in his films. He’s worked with great directors—Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, George Lucas, Milos Forman, Paul Thomas Anderson, to name a few—and has held his own on-screen with such prominent actors as Dustin Hoffman, Joe Pesci, Geena Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Jeff Goldblum.
But he has little shame about doing what might generously be called lighter fare. His list of one-star movies is longer than most actors’ entire IMDb pages. He famously agreed to do Snakes on a Plane because he liked the title. It could be said that he picks scripts like a 10-year-old picking out candy at the concessions counter, with joy, abandon and, I can’t help notice, a fair bit of gratitude.
IN SEGREGATED Chattanooga, Tennessee, Jackson was the son of a factory worker and quickly learned the rules of the world. He knew that there were people who meant him harm because of the color of his skin, and he adapted both his razor-sharp wit and constant vigilance accordingly. He got interested in acting in the middle grades and, around the same time, learned that his soon-to-be trademark utterance, “motherf---er,” actually helped him ease his embarrassing stutter. Jackson attended Morehouse College, where he quickly joined a group of student radicals, who in 1969 held members of the board of trustees captive, leading to a 29-hour siege. Jackson was expelled for two years, but his fate was redirected when the FBI told his mother that her child was mixed up in some heavy stuff and that if she wanted him to live, she had to get him out of Atlanta. Jackson was summarily shipped off to live with relatives in Los Angeles.
When the acting bug bit him, he relocated to New York City, where he fell in with other ambitious Black actors, including his future wife, Denzel Washington and Laurence Fishburne. Jackson’s career stalled when his drug and alcohol use reached a fever pitch, and in 1990, he found himself, at 42 years old, shipped off once again, this time to a rehab facility in upstate New York. He hasn’t looked back: His first role upon leaving rehab was as the crack-addicted Gator in Spike Lee’s film Jungle Fever, a performance impactful enough that the Cannes Film Festival revived the best supporting actor award just to give it to him.
From there the kid from Chattanooga, simply put, went on to become the highest-grossing leading man in movie history. [See “15 Most Iconic Roles,” below] His credits, remarkably, number north of 250, and his movies are responsible for a staggering $28 billion at the box office worldwide, not to mention a BAFTA, an honorary Academy Award and Tony and Emmy nods. Now 75 years old, the man is still youthful and spry, gracious and quick-witted, kept in shape by a strict diet and a regimen of golf, Pilates and acupuncture. His activism has morphed into the quieter type, and he is generous with his good fortune (he and his wife donated $5 million to refurbish the fine arts building at Spelman College, for example; she is an alumna) but prefers to keep most of his generosity behind the scenes. I settle into a conversation with Jackson about his latest projects, his experiences with aging, his long marriage and exactly how he manages to stay so energetic.
“I know a lot of people think I’m volatile. I guess I am. But I have a great compassion for the people that I see who are less fortunate.”
Q. Fewer and fewer people are alive who experienced segregation firsthand. What was that like?
It was a village. I could go to different places in town and be safe because people knew who I was. And when we looked at the dominant culture, we knew how they felt about us, and they knew how we felt about them. And they were safer with us than we were with them.
When I was going to school, teachers often came to your house, so that they’d know where you came from. And they knew I had to go to college. That was the expectation.
When other kids were diagramming sentences, I was reading literature, because they knew I could diagram a sentence. I knew what a subject and a predicate were and all that other stuff. Or when I was in a math class, and the other kids were doing simple division, I was doing something else because the teachers knew I knew it. They protected us, and they gave us the information we needed to go into the world. They gave us our history too. Though I already knew what slavery was, and how it was, because my grandmother was one generation removed from slavery. Her mom was a slave. So when she talked to me about slavery and white people, it was painted with another kind of brush.
Q. Tell me more about her.
She worked for white people. She was raising white people’s kids, and they used to give me like a gift on Christmas, or some s---, you know? One year, I didn’t write a thank-you card fast enough, and they asked for one. They said, “Pearl, did Sam get that gift we gave?”
She’s like, “Yes, he did.”
“Well, I ain’t got no thank-you card. You all raising that boy right?”
She took her apron off, left and never went back to work. They came by the house every weekend for almost a year saying, “Pearl, we’re so sorry, please come back.” She didn’t look at them and never went back to work. My grandfather told her she didn’t have to work no more, and she didn’t.
So segregation, for me, is painted in those lessons that I got from my grandmother and my grandfather, how to survive in a world that was very, very dangerous—for insignificant offenses.
Q. You’re a citizen of Gabon. How did that come about?
When we were doing the documentary Enslaved about the ships that didn’t make it, my genetic ancestry came back as being Gabonese, and then my tribal destination came up. I went back to Gabon, and they had a whole initiation ceremony into the tribe, and they gave me a passport.
Q. How was that for you?
It was moving. I guess you don’t know what survivor’s remorse is until you’re standing where the slave ships had been sitting in the ocean just looking at the horizon. But it was crazy, too, because I met the chief of the Benga tribe, and he looked just like my best friend from New York. I looked down and I saw girls that I’d had relationships with from high school or wherever, and I saw me in different places. So it’s a deep thing to find out that you belong somewhere.
Q. You mention survivor’s remorse. I was thinking about sobriety and what it means to turn your life around—to basically be living what feels like a second life. Talk a little bit about that decision to make a change in your life and what of that you carry with you today.
I was tired. I was whipped, because of that first time I appeared in Piano Lesson, in 1990. I was Charles Dutton’s understudy. I had to go to work every night and listen to him do the role that I had originated at Yale Repertory Theater in 1987, and it was making me crazy.
I don’t know about deciding to get sober, because I was trying to get high. My wife and daughter found me lying on the floor. My best friend from high school was a drug counselor and my wife called him, and I was in rehab the next day. I didn’t go kicking and screaming because I was tired.
I had a very palpable life change because of it. I played Gator, and then Whoopi Goldberg talked these people into creating this award at the Cannes Film Festival—best supporting actor—for the performance.
And then I got the call, because I always said I was never coming to Hollywood until they called me, and I got the call, and I ended up doing White Sands. I got another call to come to Hollywood and meet Harrison Ford and see if he was cool, and I did Patriot Games and then got a three-picture deal at Morgan Creek. Another two-picture deal at Paramount, and then Pulp Fiction. So my life changed significantly when I got clean.
In my mind, if I pick drugs and alcohol up, all this is going away. Because that’s what kept me from getting here in the first place. I started to realize, like, Yeah, maybe your eyes were a little too red when you went to that audition. Maybe you did smell like beer, you know? When you were smoking that weed on your way to the audition, got in there and thought you turned it out, maybe you didn’t.
So I pray every day—I roll out of bed and get on my knees before I do anything else: “God, keep the desire to drink and drug from me this day.” That’s all I need to say about that.
Q. You’ve had a few second and third chances—I’m thinking of what happened at Morehouse. How do you experience and express gratitude around that?
I have a different understanding of what my obligation is now. Why was I spared? Why was I given the opportunity to go from that to this? A lot of the things that LaTanya and I contribute to, or I support in other ways, are opportunities for people to get second chances like that.
Like our support of the Children’s Defense Fund—understanding that service is part of what we’re here for and whatever that saying is, “people that have, they have to give back.” I don’t know if people have to, because some people don’t get it, you know. But I’m glad to be able to do it.
I know a lot of people think I’m volatile. I guess I am. But I have a great compassion for the people that I see who are less fortunate, and that’s not just Black people. It’s everybody.
Jackson appeared in The Piano Lesson on Broadway and in film.
Q. This character of Doaker in The Piano Lesson was so interesting to me. You always want him to do more than he does. How did you come to understand his motivations? How did you make sense of him and his choices?
He’s like my grandfather. I was the only child in a house with three women—my mom, my grandmother and my aunt. My grandfather just didn’t intervene because he knew he wasn’t going to win. He let things play out. And when they got through with me, my grandfather would sit me down and tell me, “You know, look, do this, do that.” [Doaker] says something about that very same thing, about not engaging when people are raising a kid.
Q. You also have Fight Night: The Million-Dollar Heist coming out soon. Talk a little bit about what it was like to work with another all-star cast.
They’re good people. I watched Empire a couple of seasons, so I know what Terrence [Howard] and Taraji [Henson’s] kind of chemistry or energy was. [For more on Henson, click here.] I watched Kevin’s rise. But one of the first things I said to Kevin when we had the initial conversation about what was going on in Fight Night, I said, “Every time you see me, you got to think I’m going to kill you.”
Q. It’s going to be tense.
So let’s get tense with it. And he bought in from the beginning. I did have to let go of some things to make the work OK, because, you know, I don’t do stupid s--- in movies, but they had me doing stupid s--- sometimes.
Q. Like what?
You know, I kill people in front of people that aren’t my people. Smart gangsters don’t do that. But OK, I said, “This is what you all want me to do, right? I’m just going to get right in my mind to do it.” And I made it work.
Q. Do you feel old for your age, young for your age?
I pay no attention to that. I mean, I do pay attention to my body because I’ve had things happen to it. I have to work at being flexible and sustaining myself, making sure I’m upright and not kind of bent, you know? So I have to think about those things, and I work on them.
Q. What kind of stuff do you do?
I use Pilates on a mat with exercise bands and a Pilates reformer machine. I watch my diet; I haven’t had beef since October. I shot a movie in Montana and didn’t have a steak.
Q. That’s a feat. Do you miss it?
No, not at all. Way back in the ’60s, me and my wife decided we won’t eat pork. I was like, OK, fine. She used to tell my daughter that she was allergic to pork. Then my daughter left home, and when she got to college, she’s like, “I ate some bacon and nothing happened.”
Q. And you’ve been married to LaTanya for 44 years. How have you kept it going?
A lot of tolerance, because everybody’s got flaws, and not giving up when it would be easy to give up. I’ve done s--- in my marriage that’s crazy, you know? She has, too, in her head, or whatever in reality, but you got to go, “Is that a breakup offense?” Or is it just that we need to spend a little time together and get some understanding about it?
Or there are certain things that you learn to ignore about people—that she’s learned to ignore about me.
And one of the things she had to accept is that I’m going to go to work. I’m going to go to work all the time until, you know, it’s time.
9 Things You Didn’t Know About Samuel L. Jackson
For a video of the actor’s less-known quirks and history, visit aarp.org/samueljackson.
Writer and podcaster Carvell Wallace has written for Esquire, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and other publications. His memoir Another Word for Love—which The New York Times praised for its “great beauty, teeth and vulnerability”—was published this past spring by MacMillan FSG.
Samuel L. Jackson’s 15 Most Iconic Roles
Goodfellas (1990) Oversleep on Martin Scorsese’s mobbed-up mean streets and it could cost you your life. RIP, Stacks.
Jungle Fever (1991) Jackson’s big breakout at 42, courtesy of Spike Lee; wins best supporting actor at Cannes. Next stop, stardom.
Jurassic Park (1993) The chain-smoking brainiac engineer at the deadly dino-themed park. “Hold on to your butts.”
Pulp Fiction (1994) Three things about Jules Winnfield: likes tasty burgers, has strong opinions on foot massages, cites Ezekiel.
Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) Sometimes even John McClane needs a partner, but that partner doesn’t have to be happy about it.
A Time to Kill (1996) “Yes, they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell!” The defense rests.
Eve’s Bayou (1997) Kasi Lemmon’s Southern Gothic lets Jackson be very good at being a very bad doctor.
Jackie Brown (1997) Jackson soars in his post-Pulp reunion with Quentin Tarantino. Love the long hair. Wait, did he just shoot Robert De Niro?!
Deep Blue Sea (1999) Ladies and gents, I give you the most unexpected (and most enjoyable) death scene in shark movie history.
Star Wars (1999–2005) Mace Windu—hands down, the coolest member of the Jedi High Council.
Unbreakable (2000) This may be M. Night Shyamalan’s best, with Jackson as the very breakable villain.
Shaft (2000) The baton is passed from Richard Roundtree. “Shut your mouth, I’m talkin’ ’bout Shaft.”
The Incredibles (2004) How do you keep Jackson from letting the f-bombs fly? Cast him in a Pixar kiddie movie as the heroic Frozone.
Coach Carter (2005) Want to stand out from all those inspirational inner-city school flicks? Just cast Jackson in the lead.
Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–present) Meet Nick Fury, Cal Ripken of the MCU: 16 years, 10 movies, three TV series. —Chris Nashawaty