Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson, born in 1948, American motion-picture actor, who has earned fame for his intensity and his riveting portrayals of villains. In the 1990s he became a prolific and versatile film actor, playing a wide range of characters in a large number of movies.

Samuel Leroy Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Jackson attended historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he became politically active in the Black Power movement. He was expelled from Morehouse in 1969 after he helped take hostage the college’s board of trustees to protest the scarcity of black trustees and the lack of a black studies curriculum. He was later allowed to return to Morehouse and graduated in 1972 with a degree in drama.

Jackson moved to New York City in 1976 and began acting in off-Broadway stage productions and playing bit parts in films. After playing smaller roles in two films directed by Spike Lee, Jackson won the role that ignited his career, portraying a crack-cocaine addict in Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991). Having personally emerged from drug rehabilitation just a few weeks before shooting began, Jackson brought a wrenching authenticity to the role, earning an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for his performance. Three years later he received further recognition for playing a philosophical hit man in Pulp Fiction (1994), an acclaimed film directed by Quentin Tarantino. Jackson’s performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

Lanky but graceful, Jackson brought a strong sense of racial identity to many of his roles. He played an attorney for a black woman attempting to reclaim her son from white adoptive parents in Losing Isaiah (1995). In 2000 he played the suave title character in director John Singleton’s Shaft, a reworking of the 1971 film classic (see Shaft) about a black private detective.

Beginning in the mid-1990s Jackson rapidly became one of the busiest actors in the movie industry. Two of his roles were in successful action movies, Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). In 1998 Jackson was part of an all-star cast in the techno-thriller Sphere. The following year he appeared as Jedi Master Mace Windu in the long-awaited Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace (a role he reprised in 2002’s Episode II: Attack of the Clones and 2005’s Episode III: Revenge of the Sith).

In an entirely different role, Jackson portrayed a comic-book dealer bitter about a childhood disease in Unbreakable (2000). Jackson portrayed a National Security Agency spymaster in XXX and an alcoholic insurance salesman in Changing Lanes, both in 2002. His other films include Coach Carter (2005); Freedomland, Snakes on a Plane, and Black Snake Moan (all 2006); and Resurrecting the Champ (2007). Jackson has also produced several films, including Eve’s Bayou (1997) and The 51st State (2001).