48 AMERICANWAY
DECEMBER 1 2008
S A M U E L L .
J A C K S O N
“Ihadsuchahard timekeepingastraight
face while working with Sam,”Macht says.
“He toldme from the get-go that we were
going to go ‘all out’ on this movie, and he
wasn’t kidding. I had a blast. And even
thoughhe’s pushing 60, I bet hewouldde-
molishme ina real fight.”
For Jackson,workingon
TheSpirit
,with
its rooftop fisticuffs and man-size mon-
key wrenches and physics-defying death
matches, was a natural extension of one of
his passions: comic books. “I read comics.
I love comics. I love those kinds of movies.
I love going to Comic-Con every year and
meetingpeoplewho love the same stuff,” he
says. “I love a good light-saber battle in the
parking lot.”
It wasn’t too many years ago that Jack-
son was in a life-and-death battle of a dif-
ferent kind — an existential crisis played
out against new fatherhood, a career that
wouldn’t quite stick, and an addiction to
drugs that nearly claimed his life. In 1989,
Jackson’s wife and his daughter found him
unconscious beneath the kitchen table, the
result of a near overdose. It was then that
Jacksondecided to turnhis life around. Af-
teronlya fewmonthsofbeingclean, hewas
offered the role that launched his career: a
weary, doomed crack addict in Spike Lee’s
JungleFever
.
It’s now almost 20 years later, and
Jackson hasn’t merely recovered; he’s tri-
umphed. “I used to wonder if I’d be funny
or talented or cool anymore if Iwere sober.
[
I thought,
]
‘I won’t be the life of the party
anymore if I’m sober. No one will like me
anymore if I’m sober,’” Jackson recalls. “But
it’s this simple: I stoppeddoing the things I
shouldn’tandI startedgettingall the things
Iwanted. There’s just no contest forme on
where I’d ratherbe.”
Jackson,whosegreatest role todate isar-
guably hisOscar-nominated turn inQuen-
tin Tarantino’s seminal
Pulp Fiction
, says
he regularly draws on the darker days, “the
honest stuff,” to illuminatehis lifeandwork
today. Oftentimes, he’ll work closely with
directors to infusehisfilmswithgreaterau-
thenticity. “It always scares directors. They
stop and say, ‘Wait — how do you know
that’s not how this happens?’” Jackson
laughs. “And I have to tell them, ‘I’ve been
someplaces I shouldn’t havebeen.’”
Jackson believes that his survival and
success are part of a bigger plan. “There’s
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