Ben Affleck Had a Nickname for Samuel L. Jackson That He Would’ve Never Said to His Face
Ben Affleck and Marvel star Samuel L. Jackson once collaborated for a 2002 revenge flick. During their time together, Affleck developed a nickname for Jackson that he didn’t want Jackson knowing about.
Ben Affleck once quipped that he was too afraid to call Samuel L. Jackson this nickname
Affleck and Jackson worked together on the 2002 film Changing Lanes. The two saw themselves playing rivals trying to ruin each other’s lives. It was a movie that Affleck remarked he was incredibly proud of for its quality and storytelling.
“One of the things that I really like is that you have two types of protagonists,” Affleck once told BBC. “Both characters do things that are kind of reprehensible at times. And I think that the way it’s done, it makes audiences shift allegiances back and forth between the two men throughout the movie – which is unusual, I think.”
Affleck considered Changing Lanes a character-driven actor’s movie, which lived and died on its stars’ performances. This offered The Flash star a challenge he was interested in meeting.
Affleck was also pleased to team up with onscreen veteran Jackson in the flick. While working with him, Affleck secretly gave Jackson a nickname. But it was a nickname he wasn’t sure Jackson would’ve liked.
“On this film we’re doing, we call him ‘Slam Jackson’, because it just seems like a cool nickname, but I don’t call him that to his face ‘cause I’m afraid he’ll kick my ass,” Affleck once joked to Ain’t It Cool News.
Samuel L. Jackson did ‘Changing Lanes’ because he was tired of being cast in tough guy film roles
Changing Lanes was a bit of a departure from Jackson’s usual roles. The actor was known for playing larger than life tough and intimidating characters. But there were moments where Jackson wanted to have more range in his characters and his performances.
“I mean, it’s kind of easy to put on great clothes, talk tough, do all that stuff; that’s fun and I enjoy doing it. But I’ve done drama all my life and I like exploring the human experience in a lot of different ways,” Jackson once said according to Female.
His Changing Lanes role gave Jackson the opportunity to play a regular guy who was more subdued than his other bolder characters.
“This guy was so complex, was having, all these issues and he was a complete 360 degrees from Shaft and all those other kinds of bad ass characters that people try to associate me with all the time. I tend to think I have a facility for doing just about anything and I wanted to play a guy who was quietly raging in that way,” he continued.
Like Affleck, the Star Wars actor also welcomed the challenge that came with playing such a three-dimensional character.
“Movies are great for entertainment and escapism and all that other stuff. I don’t make a point of doing movies that are a slice of life, this is what we need to be doing with ourselves kind of thing. But this was a good story and the guy inside of it was a good challenge for me as an actor after having done all these other things for a while, so I kind of needed to just recharge my acting battery,” he said.
