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I say cool all the time, Samuel L. Jackson told me. Jackson believed that cool was his second-most-used word but conceded that he didnt always wield it precisely, offering examples such as Oh, yeah, thats cool or Oh, that would be very cool or just Cool. The most frequently uttered word in his vocabulary? You can probably guess it, but more on those four syllables soon.

Hot, hip, and cool have different meanings, even if theyre sometimes used interchangeably on magazine covers. Hot delineates what is desirable in this moment: the new trend, the sex symbol, the consumer object so perfectly crafted that it unites the sins of lust and avarice. Hip is the state of enlightenment that leads to understanding the hidden architecture of square society. But cool? Cool is hip put into action; cool is necessary to make something hot. Cool is a way of life.

Theyre all social constructs, but while hot is evanescent and hip is malleable, cool is the value that endures. When youre cool enough, youre unruffled by the gyrations of popular culture, even as they spin faster and faster. And if youre really cool? Then youre Samuel L. Jackson.

What makes Jackson cool? To better understand the man, consider him playing a supporting role thats not among his best-loved or most-quoted: John Ray Arnold, the harried administrator in Jurassic Park who chain-smokes his way through the crisis when the power fails and the genetically engineered dinosaurs escape from their cages.

I never feel like hes going to run up against somebody that he doesnt have the guts to confront, Hollywood screenwriter Matthew Aldrich said of Jackson. But its the fearlessness that comes from experience, as opposed to bravado, which is the opposite. I think back to Jurassic Park, where this whole movie hes got this hangdog look and always has this cigarette limply hanging from his mouth. I dont know how, but you can tell that somehow he has been here and done that already: this is like the third time hes worked at a park with dinosaurs, and he knows every way this is going to screw up.

Cool is calm in the face of a crisis. Cool is also the way you walk, the way you wear your hat, and the way you dont care what other people think of your life choices. Cool is a mask that you wear out in the world; if you put it on just right, it becomes your face.

And so Samuel L. Jackson has brought his personal cool to dozens of movie roles: gangsters and secret agents; superheroes and supervillains; Jedi and DJs; hit men, con men, and G-men. Hes starred in Hard Eight, The Hateful Eight, and 1408. Hes acted in over 140 feature films in his career: more than Bill Murray and Tom Hanks put together. Because of his popularity, his relentless work ethic, and his willingness to play supporting roles in films big and small, hes achieved the largest cumulative box office of any movie star ever: as of 2021, over $8.1 billion in the USA and $19.4 billion worldwide. Asked about the record, Jackson will point out that most of that money didnt end up in my pocket. But the residuals dont hurt: I get paid all day, every day, he said. Which is almost too much for a sensitive artist.

Jacksons a first-rate actor with a wider range than most people realize, but he doesnt appear in all those movies because hes a chameleon who disappears into each role with a new accent, barely recognizable as himself. He gets cast because hes cool: audiences not only enjoy spending time with him, they feel comfortable when hes onscreen, knowing that the movies in good hands.

If cool is a mask that we wear in public, then what does it mean to be an actor known for playing cool roles? It means that the mask fits more naturally every time you put it on, and that it leaves an impression on your face. It means that people remember how you looked the last time you wore itand are ready to believe that it isnt actually a mask at all.

Consider Lester Young (19091959), a jazz saxophonist who played in the Kansas City style. Hes best known as a sideman to Count Basie and Billie Holiday, but one of the coolest people on the planet once told me a secret: Youngs Back to the Land, if played daily, could be a balm for the soul. (Its true.)

All jazzmen circa 1943 lived outside the cultural mainstream, but even in that demimonde, Young was an unusual figure. In an era not rich with gender ambiguity, he grew his hair long, gestured in a way people found effeminate, and routinely called other men lady. Although his most famous nickname was Prez, the other musicians in Basies band called him Miss Thing. Was Young gay? When asked, he said, I never even auditioned!

Young was a brilliant musician (arguably Holidays greatest collaborator) and a pioneer gender bender, but his greatest legacy may be linguistic. Musician John Lewis said, He was a living, walking poet. He was so quiet that when he talked, each sentence came out like a little explosion. Among Youngs idiosyncratic slang terms: Johnny Deathbed for a sick person, deep sea diver for a particularly adept bass player, and most lastingly, cool, in the modern sense of chilled-out hipness. (The word previously had negative connotations in American slang: Hemingways 1939 short story Night Before Battle, for example, included the dialogue Id like to cool you, you rummy fake Santa Claus.)