Bruce Willis Told Samuel L. Jackson to Find a Role ‘You Can Always Go Back to’ After Bad Movies That Make No Money: ‘I Got Nick Fury’ Years Later

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Samuel L. Jackson marked the 70th birthday of his “Die Hard With a Vengeance” co-star Bruce Willis by sharing to Vanity Fair the piece of career advice that Willis gave him, which ended up proving beyond fruitful.

The two actors first starred together in the third “Die Hard” movie, which was released in 1995 and grossed $366 million worldwide to become the top grosser of the year and the franchise’s biggest hit at the time.

They’d go on to work together again in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” and “Glass.” “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,” Jackson said of the advice Willis gave him on the “Die Hard With a Vengeance” set. “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.