(This feature was originally published in the March 2006 issue of Premiere.)

Samuel L. Jackson in Freedomland

Sam Jackson's film career began some 34 years ago, and early progress was slow. (Let's face it, playing Gang Member No. 2 in 1981's Ragtime and Black Guy in 1989's Sea of Love was not all that encouraging.) But Jackson's role as the frighteningly wasted Gator Purify in Spike Lee's 1991 Jungle Fever marked both an end to drug addiction and the start of a career taking on probing, troubling roles (A Time to Kill, Changing Lanes), convincing action turns (the second Star Wars trilogy), and the voice of Frozone (The Incredibles). He's also served notably as Quentin Tarantino's go-to cool guy, as Jules in Pulp Fiction, Ordell in Jackie Brown, and Rufus in Kill Bill—Vol. 2.

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The coming year promises much from the versatile Jackson, 57, beginning with the sometimes bleak but ultimately redemptive drama Freedomland, followed by August's unabashedly campy Snakes on a Plane and this fall's Black Snake Moan (hey, the man digs on serpents), from Hustle & Flow phenom Craig Brewer.

When Joe Roth began directing Jackson in Freedomland, he found that "he was gonna know his lines and the lines of the person he was opposite that day; he's a first-take guy—he walks in with an idea and delivers it immediately."

"He was right about that," says Jackson. "I said, 'Tell me what the work is, I'll be ready to work.'"

Arriving for an afternoon interview in his golfing outfit, complete with a stylishly broken-in bucket hat, Jackson, warm, open, and ready to provide a laugh or share one, proved to be a winning conversationalist who made the session feel like anything but work.

PREMIERE: Freedomland is such an actor's showcase for you—what made you turn the project down twice over the years?
I ran away from this script, I don't know, five, six years. It kept coming back. I would read it every time it came, you know, and it would change subtly. But for so long, Lorenzo was just a facilitator, his character wasn't fully fleshed . . . more of a passive role. I like dark scripts, but I didn't want to be part of something that was that dark and not have an active role.

By the time this version of the script that Joe had came around, it's more of a two-hander, and you actually get to kind of travel with Lorenzo and be inside of who he is and this particular place he came from.

He's a veteran street cop who is, in effect, the sheriff and secular priest to the impoverished denizens of the Dempsy housing projects.
He feels like he's the king of the projects; he's disassociated himself from his personal family and taken on these two other families, the projects and the police. That made for a much more interesting character for me to play, not to mention having somebody like Julianne [Moore] on the other side.

And when you were reluctant to take the role, it was partly because you didn't know who you'd be working with?
[nods] Because all those other times, they never said who they wanted on the other side of that story, who that woman was going to be. And it always needed to be a very delicate yet strong and kind of well-studied actress to do that.

Julianne is incredible in that she prepares so well. We're very similar in that we come to work to have a good time. And when Joe says "Action," then we get serious. When he says "Cut," then we're back having a good time. It was so refreshing to be around somebody that worked almost like I do.

With the amount of work you do, constantly keeping in character would be exhausting. Do you have a technique to avoid all that?
I don't hold onto it. I mean, you figured it out before you got to work. You don't have to sit in your trailer, look in the mirror, and make sure your face is right and all this other stuff. You get to set and you're there with the other person, and when director says "Action," you know the emotional intent. You know what you're trying to accomplish in these few seconds of film. You accomplish it and you come out of it and everything's fine.

I suspect there's more preparatory work to it than we think.
Being able to go through a script that way comes totally from my theatrical background, because that's how I learned to break things down and learned how to analyze my particular character. Who he is? Where did he come from? What are his intentions? What will affect him? What will cause him to change? And what will cause him not to change—what will put up a brick wall? What will let that wall down? There's all kinds of things that happen in the journey of two actors inside a story to make real people say, "Wow, I know who those people are" or "I know how those people feel."

Your character has so many layers, and his role as a detective figuring out what became of Moore's character's son is intermingled with a protectiveness toward her, as well as with his ambivalence about how his own family life has worked out.
I think Lorenzo's basic tenet in that whole thing is trying to figure out, is she capable of killing her kid? No matter what she says, is she capable of doing harm to that kid?

She makes some bad decisions, including the key decision—I'll put it this way to avoid a spoiler—that triggers the entire story.
She's been in a dysfunctional family dynamic all her life, so she only knows how to be a dysfunctional person. And when Lorenzo starts talking to her about his kid—I don't know if he's ever sat down and had that kind of conversation about who he is with anybody, and this may be the first person that he's open to that way. To tell [her] what a fucked parent he was and how he was everybody's father but his own kid's father.