Samuel L. Jackson has recalled the priceless career advice he received from his frequent co-star Bruce Willis.

While the stars are both in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, they didn’t get to act opposite each other until 1995’s Die Hard With a Vengeance. They subsequently worked together two more times on M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 thriller Unbreakable and its 2019 sequel Glass.

To celebrate the retired actor’s 70th birthday, Jackson remembered the priceless piece of career advice Willis gave him on the set of the third Die Hard in 1994.

“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. “He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky and Rambo. I’ve got (Die Hard character) John McClane.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.'”

Jackson realised he’d finally acted upon Willis’s advice when he landed the role of Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), beginning with 2008’s Iron Man.

“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,'” he added.

Jackson has reprised the role of Nick Fury more than 10 times, most recently in the 2023 film The Marvels and Disney+ series Secret Invasion. It remains to be seen if he will return in Marvel’s upcoming films, including Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Avengers: Doomsday.

Meanwhile, his frequent co-star Willis retired from acting in 2022 after being diagnosed with the communication disorder aphasia. The condition progressed into frontotemporal dementia the following year.

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