Samuel J Jackson – Profile of the King of Cool
It is a rare thing to be known as “cool”, but Samuel L Jackson seems to be one of the precious few to have earned that infamous moniker – even the character that he voiced in The Incredibles, Frozone, had ice as his secret power.
There’s no question that Jackson become internationally known for the role of Jules in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as the gun totin’, Bible quotin’ hit man, and it seems that he has been ever-present on our screens since, adding a level of coolness to almost everything.
Born Samuel Leroy Jackson, he was born in Washington DC and grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he played the French horn and trumpet in school symphony orchestras, but also suffered from a debilitating stutter. His speech therapist suggested that auditioning for the college play might help, and the rest is almost history.
Jackson quickly switched his major at Morehouse University to Drama, and it was here that he became active in Civil Rights, being temporarily expelled for taking hostage several members of the board of trustees, including the father of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, during a protest against the failure of the university to have black trustees or a black studies program.
After graduation he moved to New York, where he worked in early days as a doorman, and as stand-in for Bill Cosby during the filming of “The Cosby Show”, and it’s difficult to imagine that Jackson was 46 when Pulp Fiction hit the screens. Before that he had endless small parts in films like Coming to America (1987), Sea of Love (1989), and GoodFellas (1990), and it was only in 1991 when he broke through as the crack addict Gator in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991).
Jackson was only weeks out of rehab when he started playing Gator, and his performance was so impressive that the illustrious 1991 Cannes Film Festival created a Supporting Actor award to honor him. Even then, more supporting roles followed in Menace II Society, Jurassic Park, True Romance and others before Pulp Fiction came his way.
There’s cold hard cash behind all the talk, because as of January 2005 his films have earned over $3 billion worldwide, which makes him the highest-grossing actor in movie history, surpassing the total combined grosses of Harrison Ford. Despite that success and his nickname as the King of Cool, he actually prefers to walk the greens:
“To be frank, I am as passionate about golf as I am about acting. I very seldom get angry at golf. The year I started golf I had a caddie and one day I did get angry with myself and threw a club. My caddie told me, ‘You’re not good enough to get mad’. I have never thrown a club since. I enjoy my golf, it does not matter whether I play great or badly. I let it go.”
He actually executive-produced Formula 51, where his character Elmo McElroy was a kilt-wearing Scottish golf fanatic, partly so that he could play on the courses of England and Ireland:
“I’ve played Loch Lomond – that’s the one with the bogs isn’t it? I played the one with the lighthouse. When we were in Liverpool we used to take the ferry and go to Northern Ireland. Films get in the way of my golf, but they have afforded me the chance to play a lot of golf.”
