One Bad Motherf—er: What Are Samuel L. Jackson’s Most Hardcore Roles?

Happy birthday, Samuel L. Jackson! We can barely believe that Hollywood’s baddest motherf—ing actor is turning 65 today, and we figure he has to be celebrating in the most awesome way imaginable. We decided to mark the day by looking back at the actor’s roles where he takes heads, lays down the law, and sometimes, gets downright devious.

With more than 100 film parts under his belt, it wasn’t easy to narrow down the characters through which Sam exhibited his signature badassery. And even with the actor playing both good guys and bad guys, we were still able to pinpoint the most hardcore roles. Plus, we mined some of his lesser-known parts in some of Hollywood’s biggest films to see if you can remember when he popped up.

So whether he’s going for comedy or for drama, Samuel L. Jackson manages to always deliver what we want. Click through the pages of the post to see clips from the roles we’ve chosen and remember, many of them are laced with the profanity that made us fall in love with Sam Jack in the first place!

[Photo Credit: New Line Cinema/Paramount]