Samuel L. Jackson suffers no fools

NEW YORK — An acknowledged workaholic who always seems to have a movie in release, Samuel L. Jackson has played everything from a junkie to a cop to a Jedi knight.

A man who doesn't suffer fools easily, Jackson, 57, is outspoken and street-smart, a 1972 graduate of Morehouse College whose conversation is peppered with street slang and tinged by a healthy dose of attitude.

Sitting in a New York hotel ballroom to plug "Freedomland," opening Friday, in which he plays a North Jersey detective trying to keep the peace at an urban housing project after a woman accuses a black man of a crime — he wears his ever-present Kangol hat.

His face is so familiar, his voice so recognizable that he seems like a neighbor or a co-worker. The bristling annoyance that sometimes lingers beneath what he says is almost tangible.

Delay of project

"Freedomland" was something he's been "running away from" for six years, a movie based on a Richard Price novel about a woman and her missing son and also about blacks being assumed guilty of crimes. Jackson signed on when Julianne Moore was cast and his own character became less of a "facilitator" and more of a protagonist.

Asked if he's ever been the victim of racial profiling, Jackson answers evenly, "If you grow up black in America, that happens.

"There was a time in the '60s when I was pulled over in the car because I had a big Afro and wore a wraparound T-shirt," he recalls. "There was a time when I was in Atlanta and I was pulled over because I was driving fast and had a big Afro.

"I was never roughed up but just before 'Pulp Fiction' came out (1994), I was doing a play in Santa Monica (Calif.) and I just had dinner at a place down there called Hugo's. I was standing on a street corner with four or five friends and five sheriff's cars pulled up and had us to lay face down in the street. Somebody had called up and said there were five black guys standing around with guns and bats.

"One of the cops said to me, 'I've seen you before,' " Jackson continues. "Now, when a cop says that to you it can be good or bad: He may think he saw you in a lineup before."

As a result, Jackson said he has his own rules of behavior in front of police: Don't make any sudden moves; don't make any smart remarks; and continue to say, 'Yes, sir.' "

He also has his own work ethic, one that is appreciated by his director and co-stars.

Joe Roth, the Revolution Studios chief who directed "Freedomland," calls Jackson "the most prepared professional actor I've ever worked with, bar none. Sam suffers fools not at all."

A soul mate in Moore

Co-star Moore, who plays the tortured mother who claims a black man roughed her up and stole her car with her son in it, says she found a soul mate in Jackson, who has the same approach to acting she does.

"He was on the set and there were lots of jokes. He was talking to the crew and he just got right back into the scene," she recalls. "Finally, my makeup person said, 'I think you've met your match.' I'm a little chatty and we kept talking and everything. I love him. I adore him."

What Jackson found in Moore was a solid actress who had a life outside film, a life that included an obsession with watching "American Idol."

"There are people who work like I work. They do all the stuff they have to do at home before they get to work," Jackson says. "Julianne was all caught up in 'American Idol' and then she'd cry for a scene and go right back to talking about 'American Idol.' It was refreshing to me."

Set in a fictional New Jersey town, "Freedomland" was filmed at the Mulford Gardens housing project in Yonkers, N.Y. Roth said New York offered a 15 percent rebate on services and the Jersey City projects Price wrote about had been torn down.

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., Jackson believes people associate housing projects with two things: black people and high crime.

"The majority of people there are hard-working. They're economically challenged. They're only human. You push them and they push back."

An actor since 1972, Jackson's films have earned $3.8 billion worldwide in box-office receipts, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but the honor did not come easily.

He was once a doorman at a subsidized apartment building in New York, a stand-in for Bill Cosby on "The Cosby Show" and burst into moviegoers' consciousness playing a junkie in Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" (1991), a role he assumed only two weeks after completing rehab. He won a specially created supporting-actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his work.

Jackson's performance as Jules, the hit-man philosopher of Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," made him a star in 1994, earning Academy Award, Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild nominations. He won the New York Film Critics' and Independent Spirit awards for the role.

An avid golfer who's been married to actress LaTanya Richardson since 1980, Jackson doesn't pretend he's interested only in deep dramas or potential prize-winning movies.

"I'm still that guy who likes to see myself in something mindless and exciting," he says. "I don't want to do heavy movies all year long. I want to do films people scream at."

To demonstrate, he lets out a blood-curdling scream. "That's why the next picture I'm making is 'Snakes on a Plane.' "