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Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson has built a screen career around force, precision and an instinct for making dialogue land. Born in Washington, D.C., on December 21, 1948, and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he discovered acting while attending Morehouse College. He switched his focus to drama, co-founded the Just Us Theatre and graduated in 1972. His foundation was the stage. After moving to New York City in 1976, Jackson spent years working in theatre, including productions of A Raisin in the Sun and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Two Trains Running. Film recognition came gradually, helped by his collaborations with Spike Lee in School Daze, Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. His performance as a crack cocaine addict in Jungle Fever drew particular acclaim at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Pulp Fiction changed the scale of his career. As Jules Winnfield, Jackson turned Quentin Tarantino’s long, charged speeches into the engine of the performance, earning an Academy Award nomination and winning the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Role. Yet he resisted simply repeating Jules. Die Hard with a Vengeance, A Time to Kill, Jackie Brown, Eve’s Bayou and The Negotiator gave him room to play anger, calculation, authority and vulnerability in sharply different ways. Jackson also became a steady presence in major franchises without losing the character-actor edge that shaped his early work. He played Jedi Master Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels, Nick Fury across Marvel films and television, and voiced Frozone in The Incredibles. Other roles, from Mr. Glass in Unbreakable to Coach Carter and the title character in Shaft, show how naturally he can occupy both genre entertainment and character-led drama. His work extends beyond film acting to producing, television and voice performance. In 2022, he returned to Broadway as Doaker Charles in The Piano Lesson, receiving a Tony Award nomination. Across stage, screen and animation, Jackson’s defining quality remains control: he knows when to raise the temperature, when to hold back and how to make a character register immediately.