Bruce Willis is no doubt one of the most iconic action stars in Hollywood, but apart from consistently defining John McClane in the Die Hard franchise, his advice has also led to the creation of one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s mainstays. Bruce Willis would ultimately help create none other than the MCU spymaster Nick Fury, played by Samuel Jackson.
Recently, Bruce Willis celebrated his 70th birthday and Vanity Fair prepared a story piece for the actor where they also told how Willis influenced Samuel Jackson’s decisions. In the story, Jackson thanked Bruce Willis for the advice because the latter told him to find a character to go back to if his other movies flop. That character turned out to be Nick Fury for Samuel Jackson.
“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.
He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky and Rambo. I’ve got John McClane.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’ 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. I’ve got this character now,'” recalls Jackson in the Vanity Fair story piece.
From there on, Jackson became Nick Fury and defined the MCU character so much, that it’s hard to imagine Fury with another actor. That isn’t to say Jackson didn’t have other roles that also gave rise to iconic characters. Shaft comes to mind, though it didn’t exactly have the same impact on Fury’s career as MCU’s Nick Fury.
To date, Nick Fury has appeared in 11 MCU films in both big and small roles when initially, Jackson only signed up for a nine-picture deal with Disney. Additionally, Fury got his own mini-series for Disney+ though we don’t talk about that– in fact, no MCU fan wants to talk about that.
Jackson’s Not Stopping as Fury
In any case, Jackson’s Fury was an instant hit in the MCU, even from his very first appearance in Iron Man 2. Jackson was, however, surprised at how quickly Disney+ put out MCU movies, which was a relief to him since he initially feared that he wouldn’t live long enough for nine movies.
For the record, Samuel Jackson is now 76 years old, and he’s still set to appear in future MCU and Avengers movies, most notably Avengers: Doomsday, which will hopefully be released in 2026.
Fury was Modeled After Jackson
Those who have read the comic books will recall that Nick Fury was initially a blond white man modeled after David Hasselhoff. However, later editions of the mainline Marvel comic books introduced an alternate universe Fury character where he became a bald black man modeled after Samuel Jackson.
MCU adapted this take as the main Nick Fury, and because Samuel Jackson was already calling dibs on the character modeled after him. So far Bruce Willis’ advice and Samuel Jackson’s take on the MCU character have taken Nick Fury to greater heights in pop culture.
