Jackson was already a working actor years before Hollywood recruited him. The Avengers star had a few television credits and already had a presence in theater. A Soldier’s Play and The Piano Lesson were just a couple of the plays the actor performed in.

But before he set out for an acting career, Jackson didn’t set out to achieve movie stardom. In Jackson’s younger years, that didn’t even seem like a possibility.

“Imagining that you wanted to be on screen or be a movie star was like, no, that was crazy. I grew up in segregation, you know, that didn’t happen…It never occurred to me that I could be a movie star, even though I was watching Sidney Poitier from time to time on screen,” Jackson once said in an interview with Deadline. “It just was not in the realm of possibility. It was not something that you could aspire to.”

Jackson wasn’t even aware he could make a living as a working actor until his college years.

“That didn’t occur to me until maybe somewhere in college, where I started watching these blaxploitation films, that was more Black representation on screen,” he said.

Eventually, the acting bug took hold of Jackson for good and he’d found his calling in life.