Samuel L. Jackson has never been afraid to speak his mind, or to speak out. Soon as Hollywood highers-up flirted with using artificial intelligence to create actors, he vowed there would never be an AI Sam Jackson. It’s all part of a life spent fighting the power, which he discusses in a new, in-depth interview with Vulture. At one point, while explaining the beginnings of his life as an activist, Jackson went off on a delightfully profane rant about cheapskate billionaires.
“I’m 74. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be around here raising hell or doing what I’m doing,” Jackson said. “But people need to start understanding that the economic gap is crazy. I pay an enormous amount of taxes, and it’s fine because I know I should.”
Alas, not everyone who has tons of money is like him. “But why can’t we get billionaires to pay their f*cking taxes?” he railed. “If those motherf*ckers paid their taxes we’d solve a whole bunch of sh*t. And they would still be richer than every motherf*cker walking around them.”
In the chat, Jackson goes into great detail about his earlier life, especially how he first became an activist while a freshman at Morehouse, the historically Black college, how he was definitely “not a nonviolent protester,” how the FBI showed up his family home in Atlanta, etc. He also discusses arriving in Los Angeles with no connections in Hollywood, finally getting a job for the bureau of public assistance:
I used to go to people’s houses and see if they were still eligible. I wouldn’t have taken anybody’s fucking money. I was still part of the Black Revolution then. All these people that were on welfare, I just went out and sat in their house, smoked reefer with them, and hung out, made sure that all this stuff was in order and made sure they stayed on public assistance.
It’s a great read, which you can delve into over at Vulture.