Photo: Mike Marsland/WireImage
Samuel L. Jacksonis opening up about his past drug use in a new interview.
Jackson, 70, spoke toThe Hollywood Reporterfor its latest cover story, where he got candid about struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine in the 1980s and 1990s.
“The whole time I was using, sure, I had a good reputation,” he toldTHR. “I showed up on time, I did my lines. I was great. But there was something that was keeping me from getting to that next place.”
“I had to sit there every night on the steps behind the theater and listen to Charles Dutton do that part,” Jackson toldTHR.“I’d sit there and smoke crack while I listened to the play. It made me f—ing crazy. Because I’d be listening to him doing the lines and going, ‘That’s not right!’ ”
Samuel L. Jackson on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter.Brian Bowen Smith/The Hollywood Reporter
“We would smoke cigarettes together in the rain under this awning where we were shooting in Chicago,” Jackson said. “It was fun. But I never said, ‘Hey Jessica, I used to watch you while smoking crack’ or nothing.”
Jackson toldTHRthat he went to rehab after his wife, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and daughter found him unconscious in the kitchen.
Steve Granitz/WireImage
“I’d been getting high since, s—, 15, 16 years old, and I was tired as f—,” he toldTHRabout going to rehab.
In a twist of fate, the first role that he booked after leaving rehab was playing a drug addict, in Spike Lee’sJungle Fever.
“All the people in rehab were trying to talk me out of it. ‘You’re going to be messing around with crack pipes. All your triggers will be there. Blah, blah, blah,’ ” Jackson said.“I was like, ‘You know what? If for no other reason than I never want to see you motherf—ers again, I will never pick up another drug.’ ‘Cause I hated their asses.”
Jackson also opened up about receiving the script for what would become one of his most memorable roles: Jules Winnfield inPulp Fiction.
“I vividly remember getting to the end of it and being like, ‘Wow. Get the f— outta here,” the actor recalled. “Is this s— that good or am I just thinking, because he wrote it for me, I think it’s that good?’ So boom, I flipped it over and read it through again.”
Jackson added that the film’s legacy has endured in the decades since it was released.
“It’s the kind of movie that every year, I gain three, four million new fans because kids get old enough to see it for the first time. They think it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever f—ing seen in their lives.”
source: people.com
