Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an<!-- awards and nominations don't belong here --> 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).
Early life and education
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. 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. 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.