Samuel L. Jackson marked the 70th birthday of his “Die Hard With a Vengeance” co-star Bruce Willis by sharing to Vanity Fair the one piece of career advice Willis gave him that ended up proving beyond fruitful. The two actors first starred together in the third “Die Hard” movie, which was released in 1995 and grossed $366 million worldwide to become the top grosser of the year and the franchise’s biggest hit at the time. They’d go on to work together again in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” and “Glass.”
“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 of the advice Willis gave him on the “Die Hard With a Vengeance” set.
“He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky and Rambo. I’ve got John McClane.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’ And 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 first appeared as Nick Fury in the post-credits scene of 2008’s “Iron Man.” He’d go on to become a staple of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and appear in dozens of entries across movies such as “The Avengers” and “Captain Marvel” and television series like “Secret Invasion.” Jackson told GQ magazine last year that he was shocked when Marvel first made him the nine-movie offer.
“How long do you have to stay alive to make nine movies?” Jackson remembered thinking at the time the offer was made. “It’s not the quickest process in the world. I didn’t know they were going to make nine movies in like two and a half years. That’s kind of crazy!”
Jackson previously told the Los Angeles Times that he’s never lost interest in his Nick Fury role and that he’d rather make billion dollar-grossing Marvel movies than win Oscars or chase down Oscar-baiting dramatic roles.
“I was never going to let the Oscars be a measure of my success or failure as an actor,” he said. “My yardstick of success is my happiness: Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? I’m not doing statue-chasing movies. You know: ‘If you do this movie, you’ll win an Oscar.’ No, thanks. I’d rather be Nick Fury. Or having fun being Mace Windu with a lightsaber in my hand.”
Willis, meanwhile, retired from acting in 2022 after being diagnosed with aphasia. The disorder is caused by brain damage and affects a person’s ability to communicate. Willis’ family announced a year later that his condition had progressed into frontotemporal dementia. The family noted at the time: “While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.”
