Legend to legend, this is a pretty good tip. Samuel L. Jackson revealed the advice Bruce Willis provided him when the pair were shooting the 1994 action hit Die Hard With a Vengeance.
“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 told Vanity Fair in a special piece celebrating Willis’ 70th birthday.
“He said, ‘Arnold [Schwarzenegger]’s got Terminator. Sylvester [Stallone]’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 2008’s Iron Man in a post-credits scene cameo. From there, he went on to fully take the stage as the iconic Marvel character in 2010’s Iron Man 2. Since his first appearance, he has gone on to reprise the role in 10 films, three TV series, and two video games. His most recent turns as Nick Fury can be seen in the 2023 film The Marvels and the series Secret Invasion, as well as a voice appearance in the Season 2 finale of the animated series Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
Last year, Jackson joked about wondering if he’d make it through his nine-film contract before he died — but he also didn’t realize how quick the Marvel machine works.
“I knew I had a nine picture deal when Kevin [Feige] said, he was like, ‘We wanna offer you a nine picture deal’ I was like, ‘How long I gotta stay alive to make nine movies?'” he told GQ in September 2024.
“It’s not the quickest process in the world and people don’t do it, so I didn’t know they were gonna make nine movies in like two-and-a-half years. Which is kind of crazy. I was like ‘Oh s—t, I’m using up my contracts!’ but it worked out.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
