Samuel L. Jackson’s favourite film moment was the diner scene in ‘Pulp Fiction’.
The 70-year-old actor has had numerous iconic roles, but the one that stands above the rest is from the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film in which he plays contract killer Jules Winnfield, who recites the fictionalised bible passage Ezekiel 25:17 to targets before killing them.
At the end of the film, Samuel’s character is explaining to his partner – John Travolta’s Vincent Vega – that he’s turning away from a life of crime after surviving hundreds of bullets, however soon after, a pair of robbers (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) stick up the diner leading to him reciting his speech once again, this time with a very different meaning.
In an interview with Esquire, he said: "I guess it would be actually the ultimate scene that everybody turns out to love so much, and it’s the diner scene in ‘Pulp Fiction’.
"Everybody loved the killing ones, but the diner scene, just because there’s so much going on when John [Travolta] and I are sitting there having that conversation prior to what happened, and the bullets not killing us, and he’s making this decision about walking the earth just to see what’s going on."
Jackson added that by that point in the movie, the speech has become "the biggest threat you’ve ever heard".
He explained: "So by the time Tim [Roth] gets there and I have an opportunity to do that speech again, the same speech that I’ve been killing people with, and make it make sense in a whole ‘nother kind of way, and, one, it’s just the biggest threat you’ve ever heard in your life.
"And the next, the dude’s like sitting there making a revelation about who he is and where his place is in the world, and who he actually is.
"He said, ‘I’d love to be the shepherd, and that would be great.’ They said that they didn’t know how the movie was supposed to end until I did that scene. But they had no idea that that’s what all that s**t meant until I did it."