After spending the 1980s playing a series of drug addicts and character parts, Samuel L. Jackson emerged in the 1990s as one of the most prominent and well-respected actors in Hollywood. Work on a number of projects, both high profile and low-key, has given Jackson ample opportunity to display an ability marked by both remarkable versatility and smooth intelligence.

Born December 21, 1948 in Washington, D.C., Jackson was raised by his mother and grandparents in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he was co-founder of Atlanta's black-oriented Just Us Theater (the name of the company was taken from a famous Richard Pryor routine). Jackson arrived in New York in 1977, beginning what was to be a prolific career in film, television, and on the stage. After a plethora of character roles of varying sizes, Jackson was "discovered" by the public in the role of the hero's tempestuous drug-addict brother in 1991's Jungle Fever, directed by another Morehouse College alumnus, Spike Lee. Jungle Fever won Jackson a special acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and thereafter his career soared. Confronted with sudden celebrity, Jackson stayed grounded by continuing to live in the Harlem brownstone where he'd resided since his stage days.

1994 was a particularly felicitous year for Jackson; while his appearances in Jurassic Park (1993) and Menace II Society (1993) were still being seen in second-run houses, he co-starred with John Travolta as a mercurial hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination; his portrayal of an embittered father in the more low-key Fresh earned him additional acclaim. The following year, Jackson landed third billing in the big-budget Die Hard With a Vengeance, and also starred in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah. His versatility was put on further display in 1996 with the release of five very different films: The Long Kiss Goodnight, a thriller in which Jackson co-starred with Geena Davis as a private detective; an adaptation of John Grisham's A Time To Kill, which featured Jackson as an enraged father driven to murder; Steve Buscemi's independent Trees Lounge; The Great White Hype, a boxing satire in which the actor played a flamboyant boxing promoter, and Hard Eight, the directorial debut of Paul Thomas Anderson.

After the relative quiet of 1997, which saw Jackson again collaborate with Tarantino in the critically acclaimed Jackie Brown and play a philandering father in the similarly acclaimed Eve's Bayou (which also marked his debut as a producer), the actor lent his talents to a string of big-budget affairs (an exception being the 1998 Canadian film The Red Violin). Aside from an unbilled cameo in Out of Sight (1998), Jackson was featured in leading roles in The Negotiator (1998), Sphere (1998) and Deep Blue Sea (1999). His prominence in these films added confirmation his complete transition from secondary actor to leading man, something that was further cemented by a coveted role in what was perhaps the most anticipated film of the decade, Episode I of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, The Phantom Menace (1999).