Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and film producer. He is one of the most widely recognized actors of his generation. The films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed more than $27 billion worldwide, making him the highest-grossing actor of all time. In 2022, he received the Academy Honorary Award as "a cultural icon whose dynamic work has resonated across genres and generations and audiences worldwide".
Jackson made his professional theater debut in Mother Courage and Her Children in 1980 at The Public Theater in New York City. 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. He portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in the Broadway play The Mountaintop (2011). He returned to Broadway in the 2022 revival of The Piano Lesson playing Doaker Charles, for which he received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination.
Jackson's early film roles include Coming to America (1988), Juice (1992), True Romance (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), Menace II Society (1993), and Fresh (1994). His early collaborations with Spike Lee led to greater prominence with films such as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), and Jungle Fever (1991). Jackson's breakout performance was as Jules Winnfield in Quentin Tarantino's crime drama Pulp Fiction (1994), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He has continued to collaborate with Lee (Oldboy in 2013, Chi-Raq in 2015, and Highest 2 Lowest in 2025) and Tarantino, with the latter including prominent roles in Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015).
He also gained widespread recognition as the Jedi Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999–2005), and Nick Fury in 11 Marvel Cinematic Universe films, beginning with Iron Man (2008), as well as in the Disney+ series Secret Invasion (2023) and What If...? (2021–2024) and guest-starring in the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–2014). Jackson has provided his voice for Lucius Best / Frozone in the Pixar films The Incredibles (2004) and Incredibles 2 (2018). He has also acted in a number of big-budget films, including Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), A Time to Kill (1996), Unbreakable (2000), Shaft (2000) and its reboot (2019), XXX (2002–2017), Coach Carter (2005), Snakes on a Plane (2006), Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Glass (2019).
Jackson was born on December 21, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the only child of Elizabeth Harriett (née Montgomery) and Roy Henry Jackson. He grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His father lived away from the family in Kansas City, Missouri, and later died of alcoholism. Jackson met him only twice during his life. He was raised by his mother, a factory worker and later a supplies buyer for a psychiatric hospital; he was also raised by his maternal grandparents, Edgar and Pearl Montgomery, as well as extended family. According to DNA tests, Jackson partially descends from the Benga people of Gabon, and he became a naturalized citizen of Gabon in 2019. He developed a stutter during childhood and learned to "pretend to be other people who didn't stutter". On a 2012 episode of Finding Your Roots, Samuel L. Jackson discovered that Judge Joel Branham was his 3rd great-grandfather. Branham was a white, English-ancestry slaveholder in Georgia who had children with Matilda Branham, one of his enslaved people, who is the actor's great-great-great-grandmother. Through Branham, Jackson is a descendant of Edward I of England.
Jackson attended several segregated schools and graduated from Riverside High School in Chattanooga. He played the French horn, piccolo, trumpet, and flute in the school orchestra. Initially intent on pursuing a degree in marine biology, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was a cheerleader. After joining a local acting group to earn extra points in a class, he found an interest in acting and switched his major. Before graduating in 1972, he co-founded the Just Us Theatre.
After Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968, Jackson attended King's funeral in Atlanta as an usher. He then traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to join an equal rights protest march. In a 2005 Parade interview, he said, "I was angry about the assassination, but I wasn't shocked by it. I knew that change was going to take something different—not sit-ins, not peaceful coexistence." In 1969, Jackson and several other students held hostage the members of the Morehouse College Board of Trustees (including Martin Luther King Sr.) on the campus, demanding reform in the school's curriculum and governance. The college eventually agreed to change its policy, but Jackson was charged with and eventually convicted of unlawful confinement, a second-degree felony. He was suspended for two years for his criminal record and his actions. He would later return to the college to earn a BA in drama in 1972.
While he was suspended, he worked as a social worker in Los Angeles. He decided to return to Atlanta, where he met with Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and others active in the black power movement. He began to feel empowered with his involvement in the movement, especially when the group began buying guns. However, before he could become involved with any significant armed confrontations, his mother sent him to Los Angeles after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned her that he would die within a year if he remained with the group. In a 2018 interview with Vogue, he denied having been a member of the Black Panther Party.
1972–1987: Early roles and theater work
Jackson initially majored in marine biology at Morehouse College before switching to architecture. He later settled on drama after taking a public speaking class and appearing in a version of The Threepenny Opera. Jackson began acting on the stage, including Home and A Soldier's Play, which was the inspiration for the 1984 film A Soldier's Story. He appeared in several television films, and made his feature film debut in the blaxploitation independent film Together for Days (1972). After these initial roles, Jackson moved from Atlanta to New York City in 1976, and spent the next decade appearing in stage productions, including Geva Theatre's 1977-1978 production of A Raisin in the Sun, as well as the premieres of The Piano Lesson and Two Trains Running at the Yale Repertory Theater. To supplement his income while auditioning, he worked at the Manhattan Plaza apartment complex as an overnight security guard. Jackson developed addictions to alcohol and cocaine, which prevented him from proceeding with the two plays to Broadway (actors Charles S. Dutton and Anthony Chisholm took his place).
After a 1981 performance in the play A Soldier's Play, Jackson was introduced to director Spike Lee, who cast him for small roles in School Daze (1988) and Do the Right Thing (1989). He also worked for three years as a stand-in for Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show. Throughout his early film career, mainly in minimal roles in films such as Coming to America (1988) and various television films, Jackson was mentored by Morgan Freeman.
Jackson played a minor role in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas, as real-life Mafia associate Stacks Edwards. Having overdosed on heroin several times, he switched to cocaine. His family entered him into a New York rehabilitation clinic. After he completed rehabilitation, he appeared in Jungle Fever as a crack cocaine addict. Jackson said that the role was cathartic, commenting, "It was a funny kind of thing. By the time I was out of rehab, about a week or so later I was on set and we were ready to start shooting." His performance was so acclaimed that the jury of 1991 Cannes Film Festival added a special "Supporting Actor" award just for him. Following this role, Jackson became involved with the comedy Strictly Business and dramas Juice and Patriot Games. He then moved on to two other comedies: National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (his first starring role) and Amos & Andrew. Jackson worked with the director Steven Spielberg in 1993's Jurassic Park.