Hero Worship: Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel Leroy Jackson is my movie hero. He’s been in over 150 films, some of them great, some of them not, but all of them better for featuring him. Two of my favourites of his are Pulp Fiction and The Long Kiss Goodnight, which is the movie he first stood out to me, with just an all-round great performance. The other movie of his that I continually come back to on DVD is The 51st State: he’s superbly funny in that. As an actor, he’s got everything: he’s great at comedy, he can really deliver a line, but he’s also brilliant at being cool and menacing. If you need a really angry man in your film, call Samuel L. Jackson. He can’t do much wrong, apart from Star Wars, which was just money for old rope as far as I’m concerned. But I’m a big comic collector, so all his Marvel stuff is right up my street.

What I like most about him, though, is that I can see that he enjoys it all, that really comes across in everything he does. He has a real love for his job, which is infectious, and that does it for me. I remember reading about Snakes on a Plane: the producers had offered him the role, the script hadn’t even been written yet but he said he was up for it, purely on that title. At some point I believe the producers were going to change the title, and when Samuel L. found out he said, ‘Well if you change it, I’m out.’ That was a superb film, fun from beginning to end – really. A great title, a great idea. I don’t watch TV, I watch DVDs a lot, and quite often, on a drunken night, I’ll stick on Snakes on a Plane, which might not sound like a great endorsement, but for me there’s no better compliment than a film you can come back to again and again.

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