Warming up to a summer of Sam

They call him the busiest actor in Hollywood and with good reason. Even Samuel L. Jackson doesn't know how many films he's made for sure, but he reckons it's 'about 65' since his debut in 1972. But he gets called other things besides, not least 'The Man'. Though he insists he is consistently confused with Laurence Fishburne, it seems hard to believe that the perennially cool, forever Kangol cap-wearing Jackson could be mistaken for anyone else. Not since 1994's Pulp Fiction anyway, when he blew away audiences and a stream of unfortunates on screen, earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination to boot. That he didn't win one for 1996's searing drama, A Time To Kill, may have been unfair (it was the year The English Patient swept all before it). That he wasn't even nominated surprised a lot of Hollywood insiders.

Jackson makes so many films that it's sometimes hard to keep up. His latest, Rules Of Engagement is, like A Time To Kill, a courtroom drama in which Jackson is once again accused of murder. This time he is Terry Childers, a highly decorated colonel in the US Marines accused of killing unarmed civilians demonstrating outside the US Embassy in Yemen. His only hope of beating the system lies with an old army friend, Colonel Hayes Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones), whose life Childers saved while both were serving in Vietnam. Jackson says first and foremost that the film is about 'what true friendship means. These guys have been through life-and-death situations together. The major thing is, they believed in each other.'

Many in Hollywood believe that Tommy Lee Jones is one of its more difficult players. 'I'd heard the stories,' laughs Jackson, 'but my wife LaTanya had worked with T.L. in US Marshals. She told me he was a fabulous person and a guy's guy. He just doesn't tolerate bullshit of any sort - he doesn't like inane conversation or wasting time. When I met him he was totally forthcoming and really cool.'

Both Jackson and Jones had to attend boot camp in preparation for filming, and though both are the wrong side of 50 (Jackson is 51) they received no special treatment. 'I played war games a lot when I was a kid 'cause I watched war movies. But nothing compared to what we did. I haven't run a 100-yard dash in ten years.' Nothing, though, could substitute for Jackson's real-life lack of army experience. Though he was draft age during the Vietnam War, Jackson says he 'just didn't want to go and fight. All my relatives had been in the military. My uncle was a marine, my cousin was a marine who was killed in Vietnam. I wasn't anti-war, I just didn't want to die. But I'm proud to represent the marines in this film. They are a special breed of young men and women.'

While doing his best to stay out of Vietnam, Jackson was studying architecture at college in Atlanta, Georgia. Having long suffered from a stutter, Jackson once spent a whole school year hardly speaking. 'During that year I made the best grades in the class so everybody would leave me alone. I set the curve.' But the stutter accompanied him to college, where he heeded his speech therapist's advice and auditioned for a musical. He got a part, loved it and traded architecture for theatre studies shortly afterwards. An only child raised by his mother and grandmother, Jackson had to work hard to convince his family his career choice was a sensible one. When he landed a TV commercial for a Southern hamburger chain, Jackson's nearest and dearest thought he might have a future in the trade after all.

In 1980 Jackson married his longtime sweetheart LaTanya and the couple had a daughter, Zoe, in 1982. About the same time, Jackson was spotted on stage in New York by Spike Lee. It was the beginning of an enduring professional and personal relationship (which foundered only when Lee accused Jackson of overusing the word 'nigger' in Jackie Brown), but the fledgling actor was simultaneously cultivating less healthy relationships, with alcohol and crack-cocaine. When he lost the lead in a Broadway play because he was 'showing up to too many auditions with red eyes and smelling of beer', Jackson wised up. 'You make it, I abused it,' he says now. 'I have an addictive personality. If I bought a six-pack of beer, I drank the whole thing. If I bought a bottle of wine, I drank all of that too. I can't have just one of anything.' He consistently credits his wife for standing by him: 'The secret to making a relationship last is not walking away at the first sign of trouble. It's so easy to walk away from something.' And confesses to only one serious addiction these days: 'Golf.' But he still has a deviated septum from his cocaine-abusing days. 'I never got it fixed because it's like my reminder.'

Two weeks after leaving rehab, Jackson began his first role as a sober man - playing Wesley Snipes's crack-head brother in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever. Although the role was small, his performance was considered so notable that the Cannes Film Festival created its first Best Supporting Actor award and bestowed it on Jackson. It was to prove the turning point of his career.

Though he has won as many friends and fans in Hollywood as out of it, Jackson bears little trace of an ego. When he first heard that a remake of the classic 1971 film Shaft was in the works, he says, he 'was wondering who exactly they could get to play Shaft. (Richard Roundtree played the ladykiller private investigator in the original). I was thinking who would be as cool or as impactful or as suave as Richard. I thought of some names but mine never popped into my head.' When he was sent the script, he assumed he was being considered for a 'supporting character'.

Though there is substantially less sex in the new Shaft - 'it's kind of politically incorrect these days for one man to fall in and out of bed with five women in an hour unless you're James Bond' - Jackson was more concerned with creating a hero for young African-Americans. 'When we saw Richard in Shaft, he was a total hero. People like me were thinking, "Oh my God, here's a guy who sounds like us, dresses the way we want to dress, who's smart and hip and tough."' Jackson calls his Shaft 'a different hero for a different time. We always watch those guys standing in the middle of the street with both guns blazing, getting the girl and riding off into the sunset. But it's always Arnold or Bruce or Mel Gibson. Denzel works and I work and Laurence Fishburne works. But we're still not that guy. So hopefully there'll be someone looking up at the screen, seeing me, and going, "Wow, we have another hero." Hopefully I'm as heroic and brave and cool and sharp, and I guess sexy, as Richard was.'

Jackson is indeed all those things and more. Though he'd like to be known as a movie star, rather than a black movie star, he knows he can't escape the ethnicity. That will always be part of the equation. African-Americans in the world will always look at me as one of their own stars. But other people see me as a movie star. It's cool to be recognised by people and be liked by them. And the other good thing is that some are still fearful of the characters I've played and think they probably shouldn't just touch me and grab me'.

Those fans will increase exponentially when the second Star Wars prequel is released. Though Jackson claims to be in the dark about his character Jedi Master Mace Windu's storyline, he says George Lucas dropped some hints at this year's MTV Movie Awards. 'He said he'd like to see me up on stage in two years' time for the Best Fight award. He said I'm gonna have a nice battle in this next movie, so that was a revelation.' What Jackson would like even more is an Oscar. 'It would be very nice to have. And it would add a million to my pay cheque. But I don't need one to validate my career. When the phone stops ringing, I'll try directing.'

Rules Of Engagement opens Fri 11 Aug. Shaft opens Fri 8 Sep.