Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel: I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say "Hi, my name is Sam and I am an addict."

Samuel: Nick Fury would be great, I've been reading Nick Fury since when I was a kid. I collect comics... I'm kind of geeky.

Samuel: (explaining the reasoning behind why he sees every one of his movies in theaters alongside paying customers) 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.

Samuel: (revealing he never curbed his language in front of his daughter when she was a child) I never edited my speech with my daughter and I talked to her like I talked to my friends but she could not answer me back the same way. I recall hearing when she was three talking to her friends and saying 'f**k you'. She understood the context of different words. We took her to a wedding once and I was asking her about some food and she replied, 'What is that s**t?'

Samuel: (about being the lead in the remake of Shaft) I enjoyed it. It's pretty much the first time I've [played] a straightforward action hero. It's fun to be the guy that walks down the street in the middle of a hail of bullets and [not get hit]. That's how I felt about watching Richard: he was a hero and I'd never seen myself as that guy. Hopefully, 30 years later, somebody in the theater will feel good about the fact that we have a pure black hero. He looks good, he talks tough, and he kind of gets the girl.

Samuel: (about his movie, Snakes on a Plane) I like scary movies and the scariest thing you could think of is a crate load of poisonous snakes getting released into the atmosphere on a plane. It says everything about it. I play an FBI Agent transporting a witness to a trial, so the bad guy puts this crate load of poisonous snakes on a plane.

Samuel: (about starring in The Man) I just wanted to do a comedy, I guess, because I hadn't done one in a while and it was an interesting opportunity to meet Eugene [Levy] and be in that particular space, because I like watching him on screen, and I loved watching him on SCTV. And just to kind of do something that wasn't as heavy as the film that I'd done before or the film that I had to do next, and just kind of enjoy myself and have some fun and laugh every day

Samuel: Every character in some particular way has small elements of who you are, only because you have to use your experience, so you have to tap into something that is personal to make certain things work. So there's no way that I actually can make my characters shorter than I am so that's always me and I can change my voice and I can change the temper of it but it's still my voice. The attitudes and the way that they treat other people tend to be very different from the way that I would normally treat people, or be the person that I am. I have a sort of quirky personality, in a way, and I'm kind of cynical as all my characters are. I'm kind of outspoken or there are moments when I need to emphasise something, but most times the way that a character approaches the particular life that's being displayed on screen has nothing to do with who I am.