By BOB THOMPSON --

NEW YORK -- Some folks had a difficult time picturing the urban and intense Samuel L. Jackson playing the slow-talking backwoods avenger in the movie version of John Grisham's A Time To Kill.

In typical can-do style, Jackson didn't flinch when the opportunity presented itself to audition for the Joel Schumacher-directed drama opening Wednesday.

The movie stars Matthew McConaughey as the Grisham-like lawyer defending Jackson's poor black Mississippi sharecropper who kills his daughter's white rapists.

The film also co-stars Sandra Bullock, Donald Sutherland and Kevin Spacey.

As usual, it is the 47-year-old actor's ferocious focus that drives A Time To Kill, and landed him an Oscar nomination for his hitman performance in Pulp Fiction.

"I read the book six or seven years ago," says Jackson of A Time To Kill. "I remember thinking that this would be a great part for me."

Grisham, who had actor approval and knew about Jackson's southern past, agreed.

"I grew up in Tennessee," Jackson says, referring to his city of origin, Chattanooga. "For the character, I walked pigeon-toed like one of my uncles, and I talked like one of my grandfather's brothers. I knew who my character was, and what he embodied."

And what his revenging rage was all about. "I have one daughter. She's 14. I can relate."

He also understood what some of the Mississippi residents were all about.

"The new south is run by integrationists," he says. "But there is still an old south there."

Jackson said the reality of that was brought home when black church torchings headlined the news while they filmed in Mississippi.

The past was present in more subtle ways, too.

"When I was there I ate in restaurants that black people didn't go to," Jackson reports. "They could, but they didn't -- y'know what I mean?"

Jackson even came across the figurative ghost of the South's history while playing golf near the location shooting.

"I played golf on a course there," says the avid golfer who sports a 10 handicap. "My assistant and I were the only two black people to ever play there."

Jackson smiles as he pauses for effect.

"It was surrounded by cotton fields so you can imagine what it used to be. I could almost hear the slaves singing."

Golfers tell the most peculiar stories. "Don't they," Jackson says grinning again.

Like the one about the golfer getting stuck shooting The Long Kiss Goodnight in and around Toronto during the awful winter of '96.

"And we shot 80% of it outdoors," says Jackson. "No golfing.

"And all the locals were telling us how unusually cold it was, but something was telling me all those Canadian winters are like that."

Can't fool Jackson. He is, after all, a trained observer.


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