 Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Rob Brown, Robert Richard, Rick Gonzalez, Channing Tatum, Ashanti
Director: Thomas Carter
Year Of Release: 2005
Plot: Ken Carter accepts the position of basketball coach at the high school where he used to be a star athlete. He’s immediately dismayed by the attitude of his players, both on the court and in their studies, and decides to change both. This leads him into controversy when the team starts to win games, but Coach Carter benched most of his team because of their attitude in the classroom. While the parents are angry, the coach defends his methods, as he knows the kids can’t just rely on their sporting prowess. |
You may or may not have heard this before, but the most successful actor ever, if you go purely by the amount of money the films they’ve appeared in have grossed at the US box office, is Samuel L. Jackson. Added up, films he’s starred in have grossed over $4 billion, which is more than Tom Hanks ($3.53 billion), Eddie Murphy ($3.47 billion), Harrison Ford ($3.42 billion), Robin Williams ($2.96 billion) and Tom Cruise ($2.79 billion).
A couple words of warning though. Of course, going purely by box office gross isn’t the ultimate measure of success, as, for a start, it doesn’t take into account things like inflation (which would put many old time movie stars, such as Charlton Heston, Elizabeth Taylor and Clark Gable well ahead of any of the stars of today), or the actual quality of the films. It’s also true that some places, such as BoxOfficeMojo.com, don’t class Sam Jackson as the top actor, as they consider many of his roles to be cameos or bit parts, and so his appearances in the likes of the Star War prequels and Jurassic Park don’t get counted, knocking about $1.7 billion off his total. Rather impressively though, even if you do this and only count his major roles, he’s still the tenth highest grossing actor ever, which certainly ain’t bad for a man who didn’t find major stardom until his mid-40s.
I also find it fairly interesting how he’s gone about amassing this amount of success, as he hasn’t followed a traditional Hollywood career. However before I get onto that, perhaps it’s worth mentioning that Jackson is a convicted felon – although the best sort of felon. As a young man he was very active in the Civil Rights movement and in 1969 he and several other students took his college’s board of trustees hostage and demanded changes to the school’s policies and curriculum. The university eventually agreed to change its policies, but Jackson was charged with and convicted of unlawful confinement, and was suspended from the school (although he was allowed back after a couple of years and finished his degree). It was also while he was at college that he first got interested in acting. After leaving he initially got involved with the more militant parts of the Civil Right movement, but realising how dangerous this was, he then became a stage actor.
While his career was somewhat hampered by drug addiction, he spent two decades building a solid reputation for himself rather than looking for stardom. After numerous well-received stage roles, he attracted the attention of Morgan Freeman, who became his mentor and introduced him to Spike Lee, who gave him small but interesting roles in the likes of School Daze, Do The Right Thing, Mo Better Blues and Jungle Fever, with the latter marking the point where Jackson finally kicked his drug problem. It was through these roles, as well as minor parts in the likes of Goodfellas and Jurassic Park, that he built a reputation for being rather cool and very good at whatever film role he was tasked with.
However it was, of course, Pulp Fiction that shot him to stardom, but it’s since then that things have gotten really interesting. Rather than doing the usual movie star thing of purely trying to secure the biggest roles in the highest profile movies, he’s spent his time making movies he thinks are either good (even if they’re unlikely to become big hits) or because he thought they’d be cool (even if he’s only got a relatively small role in them). It’s for this reason he ended up in Star Wars. Mace Windu could have been played by pretty much anyone, as he’s not exactly a vital character, but Jackson thought it’d be fun to wield a lightsabre and so took the role. Or there’s 2001’s Brit flick, The 51st State, which seemed an unlikely thing for the American actor to appear in, but Sam wanted to play golf in Britain and so decided to appear in the movie, basically so he could have a paid holiday.
There’s also Snakes On A Plane, which the actor said he signed up for before he’d read the script, based purely on the title (indeed, when the studio later tried to change the name of the film, thinking it was too cheesy, he lobbied to retain the title). Jackson is currently under a massive multi-picture deal with Marvel to play Nick Fury, which started in the post-credits sequence of Iron Man and will continue through Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers and possibly other movies as well. It’s very unusual for a star of his stature to agree to this sort of long-terms deal, but he liked Marvel’s plan to build its universe on film leading up to The Avengers, so he agreed to do it.
It does seem though that spending your time making films you think are worthwhile, such as Coach Carter, Resurrecting The Champ and Black Snake Moan, mixed in with roles you just reckon would be cool, is a pretty successful strategy, even if it looks rather haphazard from the outside.
Incidentally, there are a few other interesting things about the list of the top actors based on the US gross of their films (going by BoxOfficeMojo’s numbers). The top woman ever is Julia Roberts, whose films have grossed $2.41 billion, putting her at number nine of the list. However women don’t do particularly well in the chart, with only Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Sigourney Weaver making the top 20. However, I bet in a million years you’d never guess the next woman on the list? Well, it’s Kathy Bates at number 25, with $1.9 billion at the US box office. Her films (helped massively by the $600 million Titanic made) have grossed more than those of Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Denzel Washington or Jack Nicholson. I find that unbelievable as well, but it’s true.
There are a few other unexpected people fairly high in the list as well. For example Morgan Freeman is at number 6. While he’s a big star, he’s mainly thought of for roles in critically praised but not particularly high-grossing movies, but altogether his films have actually made $2.78 billion, with 12 of his movies taking over $100 million at the US box office. There’s also Orlando Bloom at number 14, who’s that high purely because of the good fortune of being part of both the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogies (with Troy helping out as well), as nothing else he’s made has grossed hardly any money.
And while BoxOfficeMojo only counts Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, technically anyone who’s appeared in all six Harry Potter movies should make the top 50 list, as with $1.7 billion, the phenomenal success of the Hogwarts movies mean that the young actors have already made more money at the US box office than many successful stars (such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sean Connery) grossed during their entire careers.
However, it’s Sam Jackson who really needs to get the most praise, as he’s astonishingly successful, despite the fact he found fame fairly late, and since then has built his career in a very unusual way.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: Clueless - Or, why are there so few successful female directors?
NEXT: Cocoon - Or, what happened to films about old people?
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
