Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American Academy Award-nominated actor. Jackson came to fame in the early 1990s, after a series of well-reviewed performances, and has since become a major film star and cultural icon, having appeared in a large number of high-grossing films. Jackson has noted that he chooses roles that are "exciting to watch" and have an "interesting character inside of a story", and that in his roles he wants to "do things [he hasn't] done, things [he] saw as a kid and wanted to do and now [has] an opportunity to do". Jackson's most recent roles were in 1408, a psychological thriller released on June 22, 2007, and Resurrecting the Champ, released on August 24, 2007.
Jackson was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up as an only child in Chattanooga, Tennessee with his mother, Elizabeth Jackson (a factory worker and later a supplies buyer for a mental institution), and his maternal grandparents and extended family. His father lived away from the family in Kansas City, Missouri and later died from alcoholism.Jackson attended Riverside High (Now Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences), a segregated school where, between the third and twelfth grades, he played the French horn and trumpet in the school orchestra. ,He later attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he co-founded the "Just Us Theater". He graduated in 1972. Jackson married actress Latanya Richardson in 1980, whom he met while attending Morehouse College. The couple, who live in Los Angeles, California, have a daughter, Zoe, born in 1982, who is in culinary school.Jackson is a keen basketball fan, and especially enjoys the Harlem Globetrotters and the Toronto Raptors.He also became a keen Liverpool F.C. fan after filming the movie The 51st State in Liverpool, England. Jackson enjoys playing golf, a game he has been reported to have become very proficient at. He has stated that if he had to choose any other career, he would be "on the PGA [tour] playing golf" and that it is the only place where he "can go dressed as a pimp and fit in perfectly".Jackson has also stated in an interview that he has a clause in his film contracts that allows him to play golf twice a week.
Jackson has revealed in an interview that he sees every one of his movies in theaters with paying customers claiming that "Even during my theater years, I wished I could watch the plays I was in--while I was in them! I dig watching myself work."He also enjoys collecting the action figures of the characters he portrays in his films including Jules Winnfield, Shaft, Mace Windu, and Frozone.
Jackson is bald in real life, but enjoys wearing unusual wigs in his films. For the film Black Snake Moan, he was allowed to choose the hairstyle he wanted for his character. He is a comic book and anime fan and can be seen reading a copy of the comic book 100 Bullets in the music video for Snakes on a Plane (Bring It) by Cobra Starship.
In a recent trip to speak with Head Start students in Shreveport, Louisiana, the city honored Jackson by making March 9 "Samuel L. Jackson Day" in commemoration for the city's appreciation for Jackson.
