The Key Virtue That Keeps Samuel L. Jackson's Long-Term Marriage Far From Divorce

Hollywood relationships are known for being generally short-lived, but that doesn't mean that there aren't long-lasting celeb couples out there. Movie star Samuel L. Jackson married Tony-nominated actor LaTanya Richardson Jackson in 1980, and the pair is still going strong over 40 years later. So, what's their secret? It's all about tolerance. According to the star, his wife knows who he is and accepts his flaws.

Samuel is the cover star for this year's October/November issue of AARP The Magazine. In the interview, the 75-year-old got candid about his decades-long romance. Samuel says that the key to his long, happy marriage is simple: "A lot of tolerance, because everybody's got flaws." Practically speaking, that means "not giving up when it would be easy to give up." Folks in long-term relationships know that this is often easier said than done. Yet, according to Samuel, it's what has helped them persevere through the tough times we all face. "I've done s*** in my marriage that's crazy, you know? She has, too, in her head, or whatever in reality," he explained. Still, these missteps never broke them because of one simple piece of advice. The actor said, " ... You got to go, 'Is that a breakup offense?' Or is it just that we need to spend a little time together and get some understanding about it?"

While Samuel L. Jackson makes a 40+ year marriage sound easy, it surely isn't. And, he and LaTanya Richardson Jackson faced their fair share of challenges over the years. Samuel told AARP that sometimes you just have to accept aspects of your partner's personality, saying, " ... One of the things [LaTanya] had to accept is that I'm going to go to work. I'm going to go to work all the time ... " Since Samuel has been in well over 100 movies over the course of his career, LaTanya didn't have it easy when it came to accepting her husband's unmatched work ethic. 

The couple, who first met in college, have a third person to partially thank for the success of their marriage: Zoe Jackson, their 41-year-old TV producer daughter. When Samuel and LaTanya talked to People in 2022, LaTanya explained, " ...  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 ... " She said, "In order to change that narrative, we made a decision to say, 'We are going to stay together no matter what. We'll figure it out.'" Samuel chimed in to say that, ultimately, LaTanya "gave me the chance to be the man I was supposed to be," and that's worth its weight in gold.