Bruce Willis’ Movie Advice To Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson is reminiscing about some lucrative movie advice Bruce Willis gave him that ended up paying off ― big time.

The two first collaborated on the third “Die Hard” movie, 1995’s “Die Hard With a Vengeance.”

“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 revealed in a Vanity Fair piece on Wednesday, published to mark Willis’ 70th birthday.

“He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky and Rambo. I’ve got John McClane.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay,’” Jackson shared.

“And 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,” Jackson said of his lucrative Marvel movie role. “I’ve got this character now.’”

Jackson has spoken about how much he’s enjoyed his Marvel role, as he “was never going to let the Oscars be a measure of my success or failure as an actor.”

“My yardstick of success is my happiness: Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? I’m not doing statue-chasing movies,” the Oscar-winner told the Los Angeles Times in 2022.

“You know [whispers]: ‘If you do this movie, you’ll win an Oscar.’ No, thanks,” he said. “I’d rather be Nick Fury. Or having fun being Mace Windu with a lightsaber in my hand.”

The advice is essentially the opposite of what Leonardo DiCaprio once told then-rising actor Timothée Chalamet.

“Well, Leonardo DiCaprio said to me, ‘No superhero movies, no hard drugs.’ Which I thought was very good,” Chalamet told The New York Times last year, adding “I follow them both!”