SAMUEL L. JACKSON
Date of Birth: December 21, 1948
Raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Samuel L. Jackson was accepted at Atlanta's Morehouse College as an architecture student. Following a speech therapist's advice for his stutter, he auditioned for a college musical. Upon landing a part, he discovered he enjoyed performing enough to pursue further acting gigs, and eventually switched his major to drama. After graduating from college in 1972, he moved to New York to ply his craft in more serious projects.
Attracting the eye of a young, hungry director named Spike Lee during a 1981 stage performance of A Soldier's Story, he would eventually play Wesley Snipes' crack-addicted brother in Lee's Jungle Fever (1991). His brief performance was so authentic that the Cannes Film Festival jury created an award in his honor, Best Supporting Actor-a category it had never respected in the past. It was when Quentin Tarantino picked Jackson from the ranks of the semi-obscure and cast him in Pulp Fiction in 1994 that his role as a Bible-thumping hit man earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and some long-deserved acclaim.
By 1996, Jackson had his first taste of movie star status with the summer blockbuster A Time To Kill. The next year brought a mixed bag of supporting and starring roles, including Eve's Bayou, Hard Eight and the eagerly anticipated Jackie Brown. His roles continue to grow more varied and interesting: 1999 saw him as Jedi Master Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace, and reprised the role in two more films. He has also played leading roles in other films such as S.W.A.T. (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) and Coach Carter (2005). His role as Colonel Nick Fury in the 2010 film Iron Man 2 led to him having the opportunity to reprise the character in other comic book films, like Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and The Avengers (2012). He also stars in the thriller The Samaritan as a man who's released after spending 25 years in prison.
Jackson resides in Encino, California with his wife of many years, LaTanya Richardson, and their daughter, Zoe.