(Credits: Far Out / Gage Skidmore)
Sat 14 February 2026 22:30, UK
Samuel L Jackson has been in more movies than nearly every other living actor, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely satisfied yet.
Although for years the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ was used to connect actors because of the 1980s star’s eclectic filmography, it might now be more appropriate to use Samuel L Jackson as the replacement.
Jackson has worked with nearly every great filmmaker and is involved in franchises like Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kingsman, Incredibles, the Monsterverse, Xander Cage, Saw, Jurassic Park, and Die Hard, just to name a few. Considering that Jackson is seemingly willing to take on any role, regardless of its size, his list of credits continues to grow.
As is the case with any actor whose career lasts for so long, Jackson’s filmography is far from perfect. His amazing performance in Pulp Fiction set such a high standard that it was challenging for any film to live up to the same hype. That being said, Jackson has appeared in several films that, despite being initially released to mixed responses, have now grown more cult appreciation.
Although Jackson’s acting choices can often be surprising, he’s spent the last few years mostly appearing in action, science fiction, and superhero films. While the work that he may find satisfying, it does limit the potential co-stars he may have, given that not all actors enjoy working with those genres. Although Jackson once remarked that he was friends with the great Maggie Smith, they were regretfully not able to film a scene together until her death in 2024.
Smith is one of the most prestigious and accoladed performers in the history of British cinema, but that doesn’t mean that she was ruthlessly selective. Like Jackson, Smith had a great way of appearing in both important, prestigious works of arthouse cinema and more commercial films that appealed to a broader audience. Even if there’s no one who has a monopoly on movie franchises quite like Jackson, Smith got involved with more ongoing sagas later on in her career, as she played major roles in the Harry Potter, Nanny McPhee, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel sagas.
That Jackson and Smith never got the chance to be co-stars may be a result of where they based their productions. Smith tended to work almost exclusively in British films, and in her later years was restricted on where she could go based on health reasons. Jackson has worked primarily in the United States for the sake of productivity, given that he is easily able to appear in as many projects on a yearly basis.
It’s an unfortunate reality that, despite his prominence, Jackson missed the opportunity to work with actors like Jack Lemmon, Alec Guinness, and Marlon Brando; when looking at today’s stars, he’s yet to appear in a film with Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, and Daniel Day-Lewis. While the fact that he shared a real-life connection with Smith makes it more tragic that they never worked together, the late British icon may have been pleased to see that her friend has found such success in the years since her passing.
Having recently earned some of the best reviews of his entire career for his work in the Netflix adaptation of the Broadway show The Piano Lesson, Jackson is slated to appear in JJ Abrams’ The Great Beyond, Martin Campbell’s Just Play Dead, and the third season of Tulsa King.