Samuel L. Jackson Covers Mr Porter’s THE JOURNAL

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Samuel L. Jackson covers the latest issue Mr Porter’s THE JOURNAL photographed by Sharif Hamza and styled by Andrew Vottero.

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He does not talk grandly about acting as a craft. He says he just wants to entertain and to “put butts in seats”. He has been very successful at the latter. He is the highest-grossing leading actor in Hollywood.

“Because I pick movies that I like, or movies that I would have gone to see when I was a kid – that’s one of the criteria I use sometimes when I’m choosing a movie – I ended up in all these great franchise films, which propelled me into more people’s psyches than, I guess, if I had done a whole bunch of indie films, little bitty films,” he says.

“I don’t need to be in the most serious movie that’s being made,” he says. “I just want to be in the movie that I had the most fun making and that, I hope, people want to see. I’m not trying to change their lives. I’m just trying to make them happy. I’m trying to make them forget what’s going on in their life today and sit there and watch me.”

He prepares for films by thinking deeply about how to make audiences invest in his characters. When he is on set, he does not seek approval or, really, direction, from directors. “I generally end up telling most directors, ‘I’ve seen this movie already and my character is not doing what you want him to do,’” he says with a cackle.

[Photo Credit: Sharif Hamza for Mr Porter’s The Journal]

• Andrew Vottero
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Sharif Hamza