LaTanya Richardson Jackson Says She And Samuel L. Jackson Made A Lifelong Pact
LaTanya Richardson Jackson is living proof that love, purpose, and passion don’t slow down with age — if anything, they grow stronger. At 75, LaTanya is still lighting up stages and breaking barriers. While chatting with PEOPLE at the 2025 Tony Awards junket in New York City on May 8, the actress revealed a heartwarming and very real pact she shares with her husband of over 40 years, Samuel L. Jackson.
“My husband and I — Sam and I — both have said we’re going to do this till the wheels fall off,” she said, adding But the agreement doesn’t stop there. We both have … this pact between us that if we see ourselves doing more [than] we [should] be doing, we’ll pull each other in and say, ‘It’s time. Come in the house,’ and do it that way.”
That quiet promise between them isn’t just about career timing; it’s about looking out for each other as life keeps moving forward. “We are just going to do this as long as life allows,” she added.
LaTanya, recently nominated for her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in Purpose, admitted she was so deep in “mom mode” that she forgot to tell Sam about the big news. “My daughter [Zoe Jackson, 43] was trying to get Kendrick Lamar tickets. She called me, she said, ‘Dad’s not answering. Can you call him?’” the 75-year-old recalled.
She called Samuel, who was in London at the time, to handle the ticket situation and then hung up.
A while later, Samuel called her back, confused and maybe a little annoyed: “Why didn’t you tell me you got nominated for a [Tony]?”
LaTanya replied honestly, “Because I’m a mother, and I was on the mother train, and I wasn’t thinking.”
That’s LaTanya in a nutshell — humble, grounded, and still balancing family with a thriving creative life. She and Samuel have been together since the 1970s and married for more than 40 years. Their partnership, both personal and professional, has always stood on solid ground.
Back in 2022, she told PEOPLE the couple made a choice early on that would shape everything: to stay together no matter what. In her words: “In the beginning, we always said the most revolutionary thing that Black people could do was stay together, raise their children with the nucleus of having a father and a mother, since everybody likes to pretend that that’s not the dynamic of the African American family.”
Their daughter Zoe, now 43, was raised in that strong family unit, and even now, the Jacksons make time to be a team beyond work. Every July, they pause their busy lives and spend time together on a boat with Zoe and friends. The only rule? “Don’t wake anybody up. You sleep when you sleep. Then we come together and eat.”
The couple works together too. In 2022, LaTanya directed Samuel in the Broadway revival of The Piano Lesson, sharing the stage with John David Washington and Ray Fisher. “I’m amazed at how busy we are in our seventh decade,” she said at the time.
