“I don’t buy expensive things just because I make a lot of money”
He was “an entertainer, not a movie star,” emphasizes Samuel L. Jackson in an interview with t-online. The New Yorker by choice is known in the industry for his down-to-earth attitude. “I don’t buy expensive things just because I make a lot of money,” he clarifies. He likes to wear fancy clothes and lives in a bigger house than some, but “I still do a lot of things that I used to do. I still have my monthly subway pass in my pocket. And me still go out without bodyguards.”
The only thing he likes to spend money on is vacations. “It costs a bit to sit on a yacht for two weeks,” he jokes, his incomparable laughter penetrating the phone.
No matter how successful he is, acting is a job like any other for him and he is glad to have one at all. “I grew up in poor conditions during the racial segregation in Tennessee. I thought nothing would come of me. No lawyer, no doctor and certainly no actor,” recalls the 73-year-old. He would have least expected that he would end up in Hollywood of all places. Because: “I had a bad stutter as a kid. The last thing I wanted was to speak in front of others. I was smarter than most of my classmates, but when I tried to say something I mightn’t and they laughed me off.”
“You learn to fight harder”
Looking back, what he saw as a weakness at the time only made him stronger. “People with speech disorders have a harder time in life, but you also learn to fight harder,” Jackson knows today. What helped him then? The acting. “My aunt was a teacher and also taught drama at school. She never had enough boys for the plays, so she got me involved. The focused breathing and pretending to be someone who didn’t stutter kind of worked for me. “
The 73-year-old, who never had much contact with his father, emphasizes that his aunt was one of the female reference figures who paved the way for his career. “I was shaped by women, my aunt, my mother, my grandmother and now my wife and my daughter. They have always been my biggest fans and also my biggest critics. I don’t make a decision without them,” said Jackson.
