Samuel L. Jackson is reminiscing about some profitable film recommendation Bruce Willis gave him that ended up paying off ― large time.
The 2 first collaborated on the third “Die Hard” film, 1995’s “Die Hard With a Vengeance.”
“He told me, ‘Hopefully you’ll be able to find a character that, when you make bad movies and they don’t make any money, you can always go back to this character everybody loves,” Jackson revealed in a Vainness Honest piece on Wednesday, printed to mark Willis’ seventieth birthday.
“He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky and Rambo. I’ve got John McClane.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay,’” Jackson shared.
“And it didn’t occur to me until I got that Nick Fury role — and I had a nine-picture deal to be Nick Fury — that, ‘Oh, I’m doing what Bruce said,” Jackson mentioned of his profitable Marvel film position. “I’ve got this character now.’”
Archive Photographs by way of Getty Pictures
Jackson has spoken about how a lot he’s loved his Marvel position, as he “was never going to let the Oscars be a measure of my success or failure as an actor.”
“My yardstick of success is my happiness: Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? I’m not doing statue-chasing movies,” the Oscar-winner informed the Los Angeles Occasions in 2022.
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“You know [whispers]: ‘If you do this movie, you’ll win an Oscar.’ No, thanks,” he mentioned. “I’d rather be Nick Fury. Or having fun being Mace Windu with a lightsaber in my hand.”
The recommendation is basically the other of what Leonardo DiCaprio as soon as informed then-rising actor Timothée Chalamet.
“Well, Leonardo DiCaprio said to me, ‘No superhero movies, no hard drugs.’ Which I thought was very good,” Chalamet informed The New York Occasions final yr, including “I follow them both!”
