Source: Kevin Winter / Getty
Samuel L. Jackson recently sat down with PEOPLE where he opened up about his family’s love and how their love has helped him “become the man I am meant to be.”
The actor specifically credits his wife of 41 years, Broadway actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson, for her support as he battled serious issues early on in their marriage when he became addicted to drugs, admitting that he was not emotionally present for his family. “I had basically moved into the basement of our brownstone,” he explained to PEOPLE. “I was like the troll in the basement, and every now and then I’d come upstairs and hover around to do something. I was addicted and being crazy.”
He then explained how his wife insisted that he go to rehab, explaining that “She didn’t have to try to fix me. She could’ve just said, ‘Get out,’ and left me into the world, let me go and be whatever I was going to be.”
But the 72-year-old wife and mother told PEOPLE that leaving him wasn’t an option. “I couldn’t do that because I felt as though God had spoken to me and said, ‘Now, you can’t leave this young man like this. Give him some help. And then, if you feel like leaving afterwards, we’ll talk about it.'”
