50 AMERICANWAY
S A M U E L L .
J A C K S O N
nohonest reasonwhy I shouldn’t be in that
bad place, except something was watching
me,”hesays. “I’vebeen inaroom fullofguys
with their guns out, a real bad scene, and
one of the guys looks atme and says, ‘What
are you doing here?Get out of here, man!’
Cops have recognizedme and sent me out
thedoor during raids. I used thedoors that
were shown to me back then, and a lot of
them savedmy life.”
Jackson,whowas raised inChattanooga,
Tennessee, largelybyhisgrandparents,grew
upgoing to themovies.Hewould spend all
weekendatthecinema,“justgettingmyedu-
cation,”he says.At theageof three,hemade
his stage debut in a local productionof
The
Nutcracker
. While a student atMorehouse
College, he picked up some extra credit by
appearing in his public-speaking instruc-
tor’s production of
The ThreepennyOpera
.
“It’swhat Ialwayswanted todo, really—be
akidmywhole life,” he says.
One of the things kids do is play, and
Jackson still plays hard. Several years ago,
hepickedup thegameof golf and isnow so
avid a player that he is contractually guar-
anteed two days a week on the links. “And
thestudiohas topay for it, too,”hesayswith
a smile. His love for the sport could have
something to do with the fact that it’s the
perfect game for an only child, whichhe is:
It requires only one to play, and everything
that happens, good or bad, is solely up to
theplayer.AndJacksonexplains that,much
like acting, golf is a game of mistakes. The
goal in both, he says, is tominimize those
mistakes and learn toadapt.
“Some days, it’s pouring rain; some days,
the other guy doesn’t know his lines,” he
says. “Somedays, your swing is lousy; some
days, the crew’s moving in slow-motion.
Youalwayshave tomake your adjustments.
That’s golf. That’s acting. That’s life.”
Back at the boardroom table, the clock
ticks away: 85 seconds, 86, 87. Your eyes
begin to tear — desperate to close — the
windows to your soul shattering before the
immutable gaze of Samuel L. Jackson, and
you realize there’s nothing to do here but
give in. Youblink. This is amanwho’s lived
a hundred lives, played a thousand more,
and lived to tell the tales with joy. Jackson
was always going to win this one, for sure.
It’s simplywhat hedoes.
AW
J. RENtIllY
is a Los Angeles–based journalist who covers film,
music, literature, and pop culture for a variety of national and
international publications.
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