Samuel L. Jackson | Before They Were Famous | Biography

Samuel L. Jackson grew up around discrimination. A native of Tennessee during the Jim Crowe era, he had experienced racism his entire life. He even attended segregated schools. So when the Civil Rights Movement hit in the 1960s, he knew he had to do his part. While attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, he decided to indulge in his favorite childhood past time... going to the movies. During a screening of John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, a distraught man ran in and announced that Martin Luther King had been murdered. The theatre clearing out, he returned to the Morehouse campus to find many of his friends and classmates were burning down the neighborhood. Just four days after MLK's assassination in Memphis, he flew back to his home state to participate in the garbage workers strike that King had been leading up until his death. He then flew back to Atlanta to participate as an usher in his funeral. At 70 years old Sam Jackson is one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood. While going through his filmography for research, we didn't realize just how many iconic flicks he's done. The guy's had memorable bit roles such as Senior Love Daddy in Do The Right Thing, Stacks Edwards in Goodfellas, and the chain-smoking Mr. Arnold in Jurassic Park... You also can't forget career-defining roles as Nick Fury in the MCU or Jules Whinfield in Pulp Fiction, for which he received an Oscar nomination... There's no doubt that Sam has contributed to some of the defining movies of the last thirty years. But as it goes with most actors, his early life was actually quite troubled. A youth that involved a serious speech impediment as well as drug addiction.