Jackson 'sorry he's too old' to play lead in Tarantino's 'Django'
Samuel L. Jackson was upset he was too old for the lead role in 'Django Unchained'.
The 64-year-old actor was thrilled to be asked to star in director Quentin Tarantino's new film as slave Stephen but would have jumped at the chance to tackle the title part, which eventually went to Jamie Foxx.
Asked why he accepted the role, he said on UK chat show 'This Morning' on ITV1: "The first thing is Quentin. Quentin Tarantino calls you on the phone and says hey, I just wrote a new script and I want you to read it.
"It's a western and I've always wanted to do a western and draw guns and shoot people and do all that kind of stuff.
"And then I kept reading it and Stephen didn't show up for a very long time. I was like, 'Where's Stephen?' And then when I got to him and I read it, I was, 'Oh, this is what he wants'.
"I called him back and said, 'OK, it's great, I'm sorry I'm 15 years too old to play Django'. 15 years ago I would have, yeah. I mean come on, that's an American kid's dream."
Samuel also believes the strength of Tarantino's films lie in his "real" dialogue.
He said: "Quentin has an affinity for writing dialogue that not only interesting, but real. He's done that since he started making films where people discussed the world around them or they discussed how they feel about a specific person who has nothing to do with the plot whatsoever, it's just an attitude.
"And that's what we like about him, the uniqueness of his dialogue."
