Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel Leroy Jackson, born December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., is an American actor and film producer whose Broadway career spans from 1990 to 2022. He grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, raised by his mother, a factory worker who later became a supplies buyer for a psychiatric hospital, and by his maternal grandparents. His father lived separately in Kansas City, Missouri, and died of alcoholism; Jackson met him only twice. DNA testing has identified partial descent from the Benga people of Gabon, and Jackson became a naturalized Gabonese citizen in 2019.

Jackson attended segregated schools in Chattanooga and graduated from Riverside High School, where he played French horn, piccolo, trumpet, and flute in the school orchestra. He enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta intending to study marine biology before switching his focus to drama after participating in a public speaking class and a production of The Threepenny Opera. He co-founded the Just Us Theatre before earning his BA in drama in 1972. His path to graduation was interrupted by a two-year suspension following a 1969 incident in which he and other students held members of the Morehouse College Board of Trustees hostage to demand curriculum and governance reforms; he was convicted of unlawful confinement as a result. During his suspension he worked as a social worker in Los Angeles and later connected with figures in the Black Power movement in Atlanta, including Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, before his mother relocated him after the FBI warned her his life was at risk.

After graduating, Jackson moved from Atlanta to New York City in 1976 and spent the following decade working in stage productions. He made his professional theater debut in Mother Courage and Her Children at The Public Theater in New York City in 1980. From 1981 to 1983, he originated the role of Private Louis Henderson in Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play off-Broadway. He also originated the role of Boy Willie in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, though addictions to alcohol and cocaine prevented him from advancing with that production and Two Trains Running to Broadway, with other actors taking his place. To supplement his income during his auditioning years, he worked overnight as a security guard at the Manhattan Plaza apartment complex. After entering a New York rehabilitation clinic at his family's urging, he emerged and appeared in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, a performance so acclaimed that the jury of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival created a special Supporting Actor award specifically to recognize it.

Jackson's breakout film role came as Jules Winnfield in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in 1994, for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His collaborations with Lee had already produced School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, and Jungle Fever, and he continued working with both Lee and Tarantino across subsequent decades. With Tarantino, those later credits include Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Volume 2, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight. With Lee, they include Oldboy, Chi-Raq, and Highest 2 Lowest. He portrayed the Jedi Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel trilogy from 1999 to 2005 and has appeared as Nick Fury in eleven Marvel Cinematic Universe films beginning with Iron Man in 2008, as well as in the Disney+ series Secret Invasion and What If...? and the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He provided the voice of Lucius Best/Frozone in Pixar's The Incredibles and Incredibles 2. Additional major film credits include Die Hard with a Vengeance, A Time to Kill, Unbreakable, Shaft and its reboot, Coach Carter, Snakes on a Plane, Kong: Skull Island, and Glass. The films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed more than $27 billion worldwide. In 2022, he received the Academy Honorary Award, cited as a cultural icon whose work has resonated across genres, generations, and audiences worldwide.

On Broadway, Jackson portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in The Mountaintop in 2011. He returned to Broadway in 2022 in a revival of The Piano Lesson, this time playing Doaker Charles, a role distinct from the Boy Willie he had originated decades earlier at Yale. That performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play in 2023, and the production received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play in 2024.