Samuel L. Jackson‘s ubiquitous on-screen presence is due in large part to his 140-plus movie and TV roles and his uncanny ability to be both a credit card spokesman and Marvel’s Nick Fury.
Jackson is also a consummate actor who loves losing himself in roles with the help of hair and makeup. For years, he relied on award-winning wig guru Robert Louis Stevenson for everything from his moist Jheri curl in Pulp Fiction to his rope-like dreds in The Caveman’s Valentine.
More from TVLineAs Ptolemy Grey, Samuel L. Jackson Seeks Miracle Memory Cure, Hidden Treasure — Watch Apple TV+ TrailerSamuel L.
Jackson is also a consummate actor who loves losing himself in roles with the help of hair and makeup. For years, he relied on award-winning wig guru Robert Louis Stevenson for everything from his moist Jheri curl in Pulp Fiction to his rope-like dreds in The Caveman’s Valentine.
More from TVLineAs Ptolemy Grey, Samuel L. Jackson Seeks Miracle Memory Cure, Hidden Treasure — Watch Apple TV+ TrailerSamuel L.
- 3/11/2022
- by Mekeisha Madden Toby
- TVLine.com
Exclusive: Harriet helmer Kasi Lemmons has come on to direct the biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the upcoming feature about the late Whitney Houston from TriStar Pictures. Lemmons will replace Stella Meghie, who insiders say parted ways with the project due to creative differences. “Early in my writing career I developed two projects for Whitney and I had the opportunity to meet her. She was a tremendous, incomparable artist and her story is as awe-inspiring as it is tragic. I feel privileged to be part of bringing her life story and music to the audience,” Lemmons said. Naomi Ackie is on board to play Houston, a role she landed following a spirited auditioning process that saw a number of actresses vying for the role of the iconic singer. “Preparing to play Whitney Houston has been an incredible experience. I’ve learnt so much more about her and myself than I could have imagined.
- 9/1/2021
- by Justin Kroll
- Deadline Film + TV
Filmmaking-related books released in the last few months cover a head-spinningly vast collection of topics and directors. Our latest swim in the literary waters features looks at filmmakers as diverse as Tobe Hooper and Lav Diaz, not to mention behind-the-scenes explorations at two key films of the late-60s/early-70s, and, to start, interviews with three of the most talented filmmakers on the planet.
Captivating interviews with David Cronenberg, Peter Weir, and Kasi Lemmons from University Press of Mississippi
I have made it something of a personal goal to track down as many books about David Cronenberg as I can, and sadly, it’s not too difficult. That means we need more studies of the director of Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and Crash. And this is why I am happy to report that the latest of these, David Cronenberg: Interviews, edited by David Schwartz, is a substantial and...
Captivating interviews with David Cronenberg, Peter Weir, and Kasi Lemmons from University Press of Mississippi
I have made it something of a personal goal to track down as many books about David Cronenberg as I can, and sadly, it’s not too difficult. That means we need more studies of the director of Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and Crash. And this is why I am happy to report that the latest of these, David Cronenberg: Interviews, edited by David Schwartz, is a substantial and...
- 4/28/2021
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
In an episode of Lovecraft Country that clocks in at under an hour, Aunjanue Ellis crams in an entire career’s worth of roles. Her character, Hippolyta Freeman, a 1950s widow, ricochets through space and time — embodying one of Josephine Baker’s backup dancers, a Dahomey Amazon warrior and an azure-haired cosmonaut.
For any other actor, that might be the zenith. But, at 51, Ellis is ignoring expectations of how a résumé should look. After decades working in smaller features (The Caveman’s Valentine) and down the call sheet on TV series (The Mentalist), she got an adrenaline shot ...
For any other actor, that might be the zenith. But, at 51, Ellis is ignoring expectations of how a résumé should look. After decades working in smaller features (The Caveman’s Valentine) and down the call sheet on TV series (The Mentalist), she got an adrenaline shot ...
- 1/15/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In an episode of Lovecraft Country that clocks in at under an hour, Aunjanue Ellis crams in an entire career’s worth of roles. Her character, Hippolyta Freeman, a 1950s widow, ricochets through space and time — embodying one of Josephine Baker’s backup dancers, a Dahomey Amazon warrior and an azure-haired cosmonaut.
For any other actor, that might be the zenith. But, at 51, Ellis is ignoring expectations of how a résumé should look. After decades working in smaller features (The Caveman’s Valentine) and down the call sheet on TV series (The Mentalist), she got an adrenaline shot ...
For any other actor, that might be the zenith. But, at 51, Ellis is ignoring expectations of how a résumé should look. After decades working in smaller features (The Caveman’s Valentine) and down the call sheet on TV series (The Mentalist), she got an adrenaline shot ...
- 1/15/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
In a competitive situation, Skydance Television has acquired the rights to P. Djéli Clark’s fantasy historical novella “Ring Shout” with plans to develop it as a television series.
KiKi Layne is attached to star in the project, with Kasi Lemmons attached to write, direct, and serve as showrunner. Both Lemmons and Layne will executive produce along with Clark, Marc Evans, Matt Jackson, and Skydance Television’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Bill Bost. The book was originally published by Tor Books in October.
“Ring Shout” tells the story of an otherworldly evil that has risen in the 1920s South in the form of monsters who take up residence within the bodies of people filled with hate – namely the Ku Klux Klan. D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” is helping to swell the Klan’s ranks and the monsters are drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of racism. Across...
KiKi Layne is attached to star in the project, with Kasi Lemmons attached to write, direct, and serve as showrunner. Both Lemmons and Layne will executive produce along with Clark, Marc Evans, Matt Jackson, and Skydance Television’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Bill Bost. The book was originally published by Tor Books in October.
“Ring Shout” tells the story of an otherworldly evil that has risen in the 1920s South in the form of monsters who take up residence within the bodies of people filled with hate – namely the Ku Klux Klan. D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” is helping to swell the Klan’s ranks and the monsters are drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of racism. Across...
- 12/8/2020
- by Joe Otterson
- Variety Film + TV
Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars and filmmakers and not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between.
Today we celebrate an impressive artist: writer-director Kasi Lemmons! After breaking out as an actress in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Lemmons impressed with her directorial debut Eve’s Bayou in 1997. Roger Ebert championed it and the film emerged as one of the biggest indie hits of the year. What followed for Lemmons were three films that disappointed at the box office, though all of them offer plenty to chew on: The Caveman’s Valentine in 2001, Talk To Me in 2007 and Black Nativity in 2013. We admire the performances Lemmons gets from her actors, the aesthetic flourishes that bolster each work and a frequently unapologetic look at race, identity, and stereotypes.
We reference multiple interviews the filmmaker has given over the years,...
Today we celebrate an impressive artist: writer-director Kasi Lemmons! After breaking out as an actress in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Lemmons impressed with her directorial debut Eve’s Bayou in 1997. Roger Ebert championed it and the film emerged as one of the biggest indie hits of the year. What followed for Lemmons were three films that disappointed at the box office, though all of them offer plenty to chew on: The Caveman’s Valentine in 2001, Talk To Me in 2007 and Black Nativity in 2013. We admire the performances Lemmons gets from her actors, the aesthetic flourishes that bolster each work and a frequently unapologetic look at race, identity, and stereotypes.
We reference multiple interviews the filmmaker has given over the years,...
- 6/18/2020
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
“Harriet” director Kasi Lemmons has come on board to write and direct World War II drama “The Shadow King,” set during Benito Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia.
The Atlas Entertainment project is based on Maaza Mengiste’s historical fiction novel, set during the first real conflict of World War II and spotlighting the Ethiopian women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. The project will be produced by Charles Roven and Richard Suckle and executive produced by Stephanie Haymes-Roven and Curt Kanemoto, who will oversee the project for Atlas Entertainment.
“Harriet” garnered an Academy Award nomination for Cynthia Erivo for her portrayal of slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Lemmons’ credits include “Eve’s Bayou,” “Dr. Hugo,” “The Caveman’s Valentine,” “Talk to Me” and “Black Nativity.”
“Kasi’s films are epic and intimate all at once,” said Roven and Suckle. “It makes her the perfect filmmaker to bring to life Maaza’s...
The Atlas Entertainment project is based on Maaza Mengiste’s historical fiction novel, set during the first real conflict of World War II and spotlighting the Ethiopian women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. The project will be produced by Charles Roven and Richard Suckle and executive produced by Stephanie Haymes-Roven and Curt Kanemoto, who will oversee the project for Atlas Entertainment.
“Harriet” garnered an Academy Award nomination for Cynthia Erivo for her portrayal of slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Lemmons’ credits include “Eve’s Bayou,” “Dr. Hugo,” “The Caveman’s Valentine,” “Talk to Me” and “Black Nativity.”
“Kasi’s films are epic and intimate all at once,” said Roven and Suckle. “It makes her the perfect filmmaker to bring to life Maaza’s...
- 4/16/2020
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
The Village Voice, the nation's largest alternative weekly newspaper, will hold the 59th Annual Obie Awards tonight, Monday, May 19, 2014, at Webster Hall in the East Village, 125 East 11th Street. The Obies will be co-hosted by the distinguished actress Tamara Tunie, whose many memorable stage performances include the lead in the Public Theater's Troilus and Cressida, while her film and television credits include Devil's Advocate, Flight, City Hall, Snake Eyes, Eve's Bayou, The Caveman's Valentine, The Red Road, 'Law and Order Svu', '24', 'Sex and The City', 'NYPD Blue'.
- 5/19/2014
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Kasi Lemmons, actress, writer and director of Langston Hughes' Black Nativity as well as Talk to Me, Eve's Bayou and The Caveman's Valentine will receive a 2014 Athena Film Festival Award in a festival ceremony this February. Other award honorees include philanthropist Sherry Lansing, former Chair and CEO of Paramount Pictures and former President of 20th Century Fox, who will receive The Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award, Keri Putnam, Executive Director of the Sundance Institute, and Callie Khouri, Academy Award winning screenwriter of Thelma and Louise, and creator of the series Nashville. "The women we are...
- 12/10/2013
- by Jai Tiggett
- ShadowAndAct
It may be the dog days of summer, but that doesn't mean the studios aren't already teasing their upcoming winter offerings.
The first trailer for "Black Nativity" dropped today, advertising the film as the "musical event" of the holiday season. Starring Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Tyrese Gibson, Nas, Jacob Latimore, Mary J. Blige and Jennifer Hudson, it could very well make good on that hyperbolic promise.
The film is a contemporary retelling of the Langston Hughes play, with Latimore playing Langston, a kid whose mother (Hudson) sends him to live with his estranged relatives after their house is foreclosed on. From there he goes on a remarkable Christmastime journey of discovery -- all set to song.
The film marks the long-awaited return of writer/director Kasi Lemmons, responsible for the critically praised features "Eve's Bayou," "The Caveman's Valentine," and "Talk to Me." (She was also an actor early on in her career,...
The first trailer for "Black Nativity" dropped today, advertising the film as the "musical event" of the holiday season. Starring Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Tyrese Gibson, Nas, Jacob Latimore, Mary J. Blige and Jennifer Hudson, it could very well make good on that hyperbolic promise.
The film is a contemporary retelling of the Langston Hughes play, with Latimore playing Langston, a kid whose mother (Hudson) sends him to live with his estranged relatives after their house is foreclosed on. From there he goes on a remarkable Christmastime journey of discovery -- all set to song.
The film marks the long-awaited return of writer/director Kasi Lemmons, responsible for the critically praised features "Eve's Bayou," "The Caveman's Valentine," and "Talk to Me." (She was also an actor early on in her career,...
- 7/1/2013
- by Drew Taylor
- Moviefone
Every other year there's usually one big Hollywood musical that hits the big screen. This year we've got Les Miserables coming in December (it's on our list of 20 films you can still look forward to in 2012), and now another one is going into development. Variety has word that we'll be getting a rare gospel musical in the form of Black Nativity, adapting Langston Hughes' Broadway musical of the same name which first arrived in 1961.In addition, Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett, who both shared the stage on Broadway in The Mountaintop, will sing on the big screen in the musical adaptation with Jennifer Hudson. Read on! Kasi Lemmons, who directed Talk to Me (a sorely underrated film starring Don Cheadle) and The Caveman's Valentine (which starred Jackson). The story follows a young black teen from Baltimore who is sent by his single mother to Harlem to spend Christmas...
- 7/5/2012
- by Ethan Anderton
- firstshowing.net
Unless you're up on your British literary phenomenons, you're in the McSweeney's crowd, or you're studying fiction at Nyu, the name Zadie Smith might not be terribly familiar. Her first novel, the multi-cultural epic "White Teeth" caused a bidding war on the basis of an extract when the writer was only 22, and became an instant best-seller in 2000, a fate followed by her next two books, 2002's "The Autograph Man" and 2005's "On Beauty," the latter of which was nominated for the Booker Prize, the U.K.'s most prestigious literary award. But aside from a British TV miniseries version of "White Teeth," which showcased early turns from Naomie Harris and James McAvoy among others, Smith, who is currently a tenured professor of fiction at Nyu, is yet to have a big-screen film made of one of her works.
But that's about to change, as Deadline reports that Kasi Lemmons, the filmmaker behind "Eve's Bayou,...
But that's about to change, as Deadline reports that Kasi Lemmons, the filmmaker behind "Eve's Bayou,...
- 3/28/2012
- by Oliver Lyttelton
- The Playlist
Actress turned filmmaker Kasi Lemmons ("The Caveman's Valentine," "Eve's Bayou") will adapt and direct a film version of Zadie Smith's Booker Prize-nominated novel "On Beauty" for Carol Polakoff Productions, Ruby Films and Film4 reports Deadline.
The comedy of manners follows two families with different but increasingly intertwined lives, race and sexual politics. Alison Owen, Paul Trijbits and Carol Polakoff are producing.
Lemmons, whom many will remember playing Clarice Starling’s FBI classmate in "The Silence of the Lambs", is also developing a film version of Langston Hughes’s gospel song play "Black Nativity" at Fox Searchlight.
The comedy of manners follows two families with different but increasingly intertwined lives, race and sexual politics. Alison Owen, Paul Trijbits and Carol Polakoff are producing.
Lemmons, whom many will remember playing Clarice Starling’s FBI classmate in "The Silence of the Lambs", is also developing a film version of Langston Hughes’s gospel song play "Black Nativity" at Fox Searchlight.
- 3/28/2012
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Zadie Smith's 2005 Man Booker Prize–shortlisted On Beauty (her most recent novel before Nw drops in September) is about to become her first brush with the big screen. Actress turned writer slash director Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me, The Caveman's Valentine) will adapt and direct the film. Smith's debut, White Teeth, was adapted as a U.K. miniseries back in 2002; what's with the ten-year gap? Books work great as movies, right?...
- 3/28/2012
- by Zach Dionne
- Vulture
Kevin Kline, Paul Dano, Katie Holmes and John C. Reilly have signed on to star in The Extra Man, a comedy from Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, the husband and wife team behind American Splendor. Kline plays a failed playwright who works as an escort for rich widows on the Upper East Side. He develops a mentor-student relationship with a troubled aspiring playwright (Dano). The film is based on a novel by Jonathan Ames; Pulcini and Springer Berman wrote the script with the author. Anthony Bregman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Stephanie Davis (The Caveman's Valentine) will produce. Berman and Pulcini, who earned an Oscar nomination for their American Splendor script, last directed the Scarlett Johansson comedy The Nanny Diaries, which opened in 2007. The Extra Man starts production in February in New York.
- 1/20/2009
- by James Cook
- TheMovingPicture.net
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