“Find a character”: Samuel L. Jackson shares lucrative tip he received from Bruce Willis

Actor Samuel L. Jackson revealed a trade secret from Bruce Willis that the actor says kept him sane during his five-decade career in Hollywood. 

Speaking to Vanity Fair earlier this week, Jackson said his “Die Hard With a Vengeance” co-star had a surprising reason for returning to the role of John McClane throughout his career.

“He told me, ‘Hopefully you’ll be able to find a character that, when you make bad movies and they don’t make any money, you can always go back to this character everybody loves,” Jackson said. 

Jackson says he thought little of the remark at the time but recalled the Willis tip once he took on the role of Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky, Rambo. I’ve got John McClane,’” he shared. “It didn’t occur to me until I got that Nick Fury role—and I had a nine-picture deal to be Nick Fury—that, ‘Oh, I’m doing what Bruce said. I’ve got this character now.’”

Jackson has never been shy about appearing in popcorn flicks. He has starred in several major studio franchises, including the aforementioned Marvel films and the “Star Wars” prequels. He’s been open about his preference for acting in blockbuster flicks over roles that could garner accolades and award recognition.

In 2022, Jackson ruffled feathers when he told the Los Angeles Times that he was “not doing statue-chasing movies” and would “rather be Nick Fury.” 

“I want to do the stuff that made me want to go to the movies when I was a kid,” he said at the time.

For both actors, as Willis’s advice suggests, box-office stardom allowed them to chase their true passions.

“I think that he’s basically underrated because he was a big box-office star,” Willis’s “Die Hard” co-star Bonnie Bedelia told Vanity Fair, adding that he didn’t make major distinctions between working on blockbusters and independent films. “I don’t think [Willis] saw, in terms of the work, a lot of difference between them. One was not more important than the other, because he was getting to work with interesting directors, with interesting scripts.”