Similar to Denzel Washington and his wife Pauletta Washington, Angela Bassett and her husband, Courtney B. Vance, and Viola Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, Samuel L. Jackson and his wife LaTanya Richardson Jackson have been married for quite some time and have been successful at keeping their marriage as private as they want to.
Being married for 44 years, many would call that couple goals. But just like any marriage, everything hasn’t always been perfect in the Jackson household.
Jackson, recently covering the AARP magazine, explained what he and his wife have done to hold their marriage together for over four decades.
He said, “A lot of tolerance, because everybody’s got flaws, and not giving up when it would be easy to give up. I’ve done s— in my marriage that’s crazy, you know? She has, too, in her head, or whatever in reality, but you got to go, ‘Is that a breakup offense?’ Or is it just that we need to spend a little time together and get some understanding about it?”
Another tip Jackson gave for a long-lasting marriage is acceptance of who your partner is. Further explaining, he continued, “Or there are certain things that you learn to ignore about people — that she’s learned to ignore about me. And one of the things she had to accept is that I’m going to go to work. I’m going to go to work all the time until, you know, it’s time.”
His hard work has paid off as he’s been cast in over 120 movies ranging from animated and PG movies to sci-fi Marvel films and action-packed pictures. In 2000, his on-screen appearances earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he was even once named the most influential actor of all time in a 2018 study. But glitter wasn’t always gold for the Oscar-winning actor.
In the ’70s, just as he was getting his career going, Jackson was fighting a drug addiction, to which he credited his wife for saving him. In 2022, “The Incredibles” star told People that he was not a present husband to LaTanya and father to their daughter Zoe Jackson.
He said, “I had basically moved into the basement of our brownstone.I was like the troll in the basement, and every now and then, I’d come upstairs and hover around to do something. I was addicted and being crazy.”
Jackson decided to get clean after his wife and daughter found him passed out on the kitchen floor after cooking cocaine on the stove.
Recounting the details of that day, in a “60 Minutes” interview, Jackson said, “I never got to smoke and the next day I was in rehab” and “I didn’t go kicking and screaming, I was tired.”
The “Pulp Fiction” star got clean in 1991.
As for LaTanya, Jackson said, “I credit her because she could’ve just taken Zoe and walked out and been done with me. But she didn’t. That’s a greater love than I will ever know.”