My Father the Bad Motherf*cker
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson is the all-time highest-grossing box-office star. Born in 1948 in Washington, DC, Jackson was raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His early filmography includes Jungle Fever and Juice, but it was his role as Jules Winnfield in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction that turned Jackson into a cultural touchstone. Since then he’s starred in many of Tarantino’s films as well as in the Star Wars and Avengers series. He has one daughter, Zoē, and lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, LaTanya Richardson.
Zoē (age four) on her way to school with Samuel, 1986
my father is a big nerd, in the best way possible. He is completely different from his cool-guy persona. He’s got a wormhole personality in that he burrows into whatever strange thing he’s interested in and gets really into it. After we moved to Los Angeles when I was ten, we would go to Golden Apple Comics on Melrose every week religiously. They even kept a pull box for my dad. (A pull box is something that only comic book nerds have—the store pulls the new comics on a customer’s list and keeps them behind the counter.) I used to be into all things Archie, but Dad’s pull box was full of weird and really violent comics that I wasn’t allowed to read. Dad and I didn’t start exchanging comic books until I got to college. I forced him to read The Sandman (the Neil Gaiman reboot). He forced me to read the neo-noir series 100 Bullets, the western Scalped, and WildStorm’s The Boys. When I was in college, whenever I went to the comic book store alone, I was sad. I wanted my dad to be there.
Before we moved to LA, I spent a lot of time with my father. Both my parents are actors—back then working primarily in theater—and at that time, my mom was the busier, better known of the two. My dad took me to school every single day: We would get on the subway in Harlem, ride it downtown to a crosstown bus, and then transfer to another bus until we got to the Upper West Side. We would also go to the Bronx Zoo together. My dad loves animals: reptiles, mammals, fish. He especially loves snakes. He was full of animal facts—he actually studied marine biology in college.
Though I was largely shielded from it at the time, my dad was struggling with addiction during much of my childhood. When I was eight, he entered rehab. He was gone for sixty days, which was a confusing time for me. I had no idea anything was wrong. Now, when I look back on that time, I don’t know to what to attribute some of my memories. I remember going to a bar on the Upper West Side with my dad. He’d give me a quarter and I’d go play “Tequila” by the Champs in the jukebox on repeat. (I was really into Pee-wee’s Playhouse.) But I never saw him drunk that I know of. I just thought he was a dude who slept a lot.
We moved to Los Angeles for my mom. She got a role in the short-lived Chuck Lorre series Frannie’s Turn. But soon my dad’s career really took off, and my mom stopped working as much to take care of me. It’s funny that my father is the better-known actor, because my mom was the one who pushed him to act in the first place. They met in a professor’s office at Morehouse. (My dad went to Morehouse; my mom went to Spelman. The teacher taught at both colleges.) Dad was looking for extra credit, and Mom was doing some makeup work. She said, “You need to be in my play. Do you act?” Dad said, “Actually, I don’t,” but my mom replied, “Well, you do now.” And that’s how it went, and how it has gone ever since. My mom turns the key and sends Dad out into the world. He comes back and seeks her opinion, and she’s happy to advise. They’ve been married for close to fifty years now. She still gives him notes on his performances. They can’t live without each other. They each send me articles about the other. I do think it was very hard for my mom to give up her career to raise me for as long as she did, though. She’s happy for my dad, of course, but it’s complicated. There’s a sadness there.
I was twelve years old when Pulp Fiction came out. After that, my dad became cool. Or, he thought he did. And though much of the world agrees, he’s still just a big nerd to me. He goes through phases. Now it’s watching Korean martial arts movies and Thai B movies. He reads four or five books about random topics at once. And now he DMs me all the time on Instagram and recommends obscure trap music and stuff. Once, he gave me a sweatshirt he got from working on Django Unchained. He said, “I signed it for you!” I was like, “Dad, thanks. Now I can’t wear it!” It’s up to my mom and me to pull him back down to earth. I mean, isn’t that what family’s for?