Samuel L Jackson said a deleted scene from 1996 A time to kill would have earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
In the film, a courtroom drama adapted from a book by John Grisham, Jackson plays a man on trial after killing two white men who abducted and raped his 10-year-old daughter.
Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey and Matthew McConaughey starred alongside Jackson in the film.
In a new interview with VultureJackson, 74, reflected on the changes that had been made to the film in the editing room.
He said, “In A time to kill, when i kill these guys, i kill them because my daughter needs to know that these guys are no longer on the planet and that they will never hurt her again – that i will do anything to protect her. That’s how I played this character all along.
“And there were specific things that we shot, things that I did to make sure she understood that, but in the editing process they got cut out. And it looked like I killed those guys and then planned every move to make sure I was going to get away with it. When I saw it, I was sitting there like, ‘What the fuck?’
Jackson went on to say that some of the scenes the film’s creators removed “keep [him] to get an Oscar.
THE pulp Fiction The star recalled that cast and crew members were moved to tears by his performance in a scene that ultimately didn’t make it into the feature film.
He continued: “But also the things they took out kept me from getting an Oscar. ‘Really, son of a bitch? Did you just take that shit from me?’ My first day on this movie, I did a speech in a room with an actor and the whole fucking set was in tears when I finished. I was like, ‘Okay. I’m on the right page.’
“That shit is not in the movie!” Jackson added. “And I know why it’s not. Because it wasn’t my movie, and they weren’t trying to make me a star. It was one of the first times I saw this shit happen. There are things I’ve done in other movies where I’ve said, “Wait a minute. Why did you remove this moment from the film? Because the moment, in this film, is bigger than the film.
Jackson can currently be seen in the Disney+ series Secret Invasionstreaming now.