Hollywood’s all-time box office baron ($3 billion-plus in worldwide gross) emerges from a Wynn suite thinner than he appears on film—taller, too (6 feet, 3 inches).
Samuel L. Jackson walks to a bebop beat, as though his steps are tuned to an internal jukebox playing Coltrane classics. Lounge-around casual in a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans, he sports a black Kangol, worn backward—a bit of new-school burnish to his retro cool. Inside the room, Jackson gets comfy, propping his feet up on a table and digging into the PGA Championship. An avid golfer (and veteran of Vegas’ top courses), he comments on the guy atop the leaderboard. “I’ve played with Tiger Woods,” he says. “He’s a’ight.”
Jackson recently sat down with the Weekly to talk about his new movie, Resurrecting the Champ, the most fun he’s had onscreen and why he’s nearly director-proof.
Was there an aha moment in which you knew that acting was your calling?
I was in college and taking a public-speaking course, and a professor offered extra credit to do Threepenny Opera because he didn’t have enough guys. I showed up to the first rehearsal, and I felt like I was in a place that I belonged.
You’ve played a gamut of roles, from heroes to drug addicts. When you get a script, is there some sort of Samuel L. Jackson litmus test you subject it to?
I look for stories. The major criteria are, would I pay my money to go see the story, and would I pay my money to go see the story with me in it? If the answer is yes, I move. Then I try to get inside the story and see if it makes sense to me, intrigues me or challenges me as an actor. Then I go about having fun and trying to create something that makes sense to an audience, that’s compelling and involves them in the story.
What pulled you into Resurrecting the Champ?
The relationships. The relationships between fathers and sons. What it means to try and live up to other people’s expectations.
How do you go about inhabiting a character?
You try to figure out who a person is. If it’s indicated in the script, you start there. If it’s from source material in a novel, you start there. If it’s not, then I can take a character like Jules in Pulp Fiction, and I can make up who his parents were, his educational background, did he have any military experience, does he have brothers and sisters, what does he like, what does he not like. I have fun making up this stuff. You don’t have to know everything about him to know that he’s not one-dimensional.
What roles stretched you physically, emotionally and psychologically?
The first character in which I was cognizant of that happening was Gator in Jungle Fever. I was two weeks out of rehab when I did that movie. I was detoxing and really didn’t have to act to do that movie. I could work out a whole bunch of demons and use it as a catharsis. That was the first job I’d done without a substance in my body.
How much acting was involved in playing an addict?
You end up playing the effects of the drugs or being high all the time. I wanted to deal with the effects of my relationships and how we, as crackheads, affected people in our families.
The most fun you’ve had onscreen?
I was miserable when shooting Long Kiss Goodnight because the average temperature was minus-43, but I loved the character [Mitch, a brainy but alcoholic detective]. I loved doing Die Hard With a Vengeance because my job was to be an audience member watching the movie.
You once said, “A movie is just a movie to me, they open and close.” Isn’t that an understatement given the investment you make in your characters?
I said that because after we finish doing them, they’re in somebody else’s hands. I can’t market it or edit it. It’s really a director’s medium. I’m almost director-proof in that I don’t let someone tell me what can’t be done with a character unless I really trust them.
You don’t seem smitten by your success—$3 billion in box office revenues.
Why would I? I don’t have 10 percent of that money. I’ve been fortunate enough to do some films that have made a ton of money, and the majority of them are called Star Wars. I was also in The Incredibles and Jurassic Park. I’ve also done a lot of movies that haven’t made a lot of money. A lot of people talk about how much they liked Black Snake Moan, but they discovered it via DVD, not the theaters. I’m trying to create a body of work so when I’m done or the phone stops ringing, some young actor can say you can create a body of work that’s diverse and you don’t have to do the same thing over and over.