4. Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield - Pulp Fiction
Bit-parts in the likes of Do The Right Thing, Goodfellas, Jungle Fever, and True Romance saw Quentin Tarantino cast Samuel L. Jackson as hitman Jules Winnfield in his pop-culture behemoth, Pulp Fiction. Despite the aforementioned performances, it was Jackson's first major, leading-role, with the star in his mid-40s by the time he donned Jules' Jheri Curl; the actor a late-bloomer if ever there was one. And, despite a filmography currently reading 162 movies on IMDB, Jackson has never bettered his work in Pulp Fiction, that performance full of iconography and classics of film lexicon which saw the actor forever immortalised on dorm-room walls and novelty t-shirts everywhere. SLJ's performances in the wake of Pulp Fiction (Hard Eight, Jackie Brown) are good, enjoyable roles, but basically inferior versions of Winnfield, whereas elsewhere he has looked to take on big, franchise roles in the likes of Star Wars, Shaft and the MCU. A man prone to starring in almost anything (hence the size of that filmography), Jackson's best role of late came again for Tarantino, the actor playing an Uncle Tom-style butler in Django Unchained. Still, it's not a patch on the bible-verse-spouting ideology of Jules, and nothing Jackson ever does again is likely to be.