In Hollywood, some actors have reputations for being great to work with, and others… do not. Samuel L. Jackson, according to most accounts, is one of the good ones. He says he really tries to be nice to everybody on the movie set, too, because doing so is easy, and because he knows there’s a possibility he’ll get paid back for it later.
In a video posted to Instagram by Masterclass, Jackson relays a sign that he saw while working on Die Hard With A Vengeance. The film was one of the actor’s biggest roles at the time, a co-lead alongside Bruce Willis, and he says there was a poster on the wall in the office that he took to heart. He explained…
I remember there was a sign on the wall in the Die Hard office that I never forgot that said ‘Be careful of the toes you step on today, for they could be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.’ So I’ve been nice to PAs to everybody and everything else. And some of those PAs became producers and gave me jobs.
It’s an idea that we’ve certainly all heard before, but I’ve never heard it put quite this way. While there’s a bit of a self-serving nature to it all, it doesn’t mean you can’t be genuinely nice to other people. It’s a lesson we can all learn that being nice is often just easier, it never hurts, and it might help.
There have been those times when actors and crew haven’t always gotten along. Christian Bale once famously berated somebody on the set of Terminator: Salvation. Hugh Grant has admitted to losing his temper in a similar fashion. Tom Cruise famously laid into some of the crew of Mission: Impossible for violating pandemic protocols.
While these may have all been outliers for the actors, the fact that we know about them says something, and can certainly change the perception of a performer. Having a reputation as an actor who’s great to work with is always ideal.
Samuel L. Jackson says following this simple rule has absolutely come back to him as he’s gotten jobs from producers that liked him because he was nice to them when they were much lower on the org chart. The beloved Die Hard sequel was a big role for the actor, but Samuel L. Jackson’s best roles would all come later. He likely took this lesson to heart at just the right time.
In the end, Jackson simply sees it as a variation on the Golden Rule. Try to make sure everybody has a good day, because you want to have a good day. He said…
Everybody’s there doing the same job. So you show up, and you try and make the day as pleasant as you want the day to be for you.
Movie-making is an incredibly collaborative business. There are all kinds of people doing all sorts of jobs on set. All of them are necessary, and they’re all working toward the same goal. There’s no reason not to just be nice to the people you’re working with.
Hopefully, we can all learn this lesson from Samuel L. Jackson.
