DAILY NEWS for
Thursday November 27 2008

CINEMATHEQUE SALUTES SAMUEL L. JACKSON

Samuel L. Jackson hardly minds being called "the hardest working man in showbiz." Even if he doesn't think it's necessarily true.

Making four movies a year, he insists he is only "doing what I like to do. There are just so many opportunities in a lifetime. I like acting. Actors act. When I was doing theater, I was always rehearsing a play, reading a play, doing a play. I don't see why I can't do that in cinema, if the job's there."

That's why Jackson's motto is simple: "Go and do it."

He explains: "Painters get up every day and face the blank canvas. Writers get up and face the blank page. Everybody seems to think actors --well, people will say, 'You work all the time.' Well, you go to work every day, why shouldn't I? It's a job. It's a calling. It's something I feel the need to do and I get up and do it.

Jackson turns 60 this month. His personal calling began as a child.

"My aunt was a fourth-grade school teacher who taught performing arts. When she had plays and pageants, she always cast me when I was a small child. There was always a role for a boy. I also did plays in high school," he recalls.

It was at Morehouse College when he performed in "The Threepenny Opera" that his career took shape. "There was a public-speaking class and there weren't enough guys for the play. So our teacher said he would give us extra credit for the play. I auditioned and I got in the play, I was Ready Money Matt, one of the guys in the gang. And on opening night, you get that applause. I guess it's like a rush." And he makes a soft sigh of exultation, "Wow!"

It was also at Morehouse where he did his very first film and got his SAG card in 1971 for the little-remembered "Together for a Day."

Jackson worked in Atlanta -- "My first big professional job out of college was an improvisational theater company called the Academy Theater" -- before he moved to New York and spent the 1970s struggling. Things began to change when he performed in "Ragtime" in 1980. "I love watching old movies and I never thought I'd meet James Cagney, who was someone I admired from afar. And then we were in 'Ragtime' together," he says. "I was actually in a film with James Cagney! It's one of those far-reaching things that young actors today would go, 'Who?'"

Even though Jackson now segues from project to project - just this year he's done an uncredited appearance in "Iron Man," and a voice for the animated "Star Wars" as well as starring in "Lakeview Terrace," "Soul Men" and "The Spirit" - nothing has changed.

"Acting's acting. I treat every character with the same amount of seriousness. They're all people," he says - and he means it. There's no master plan at work here either.

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