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No problem, Jackson was chuckling yesterday after he flew in for last night's Toronto Symphony Orchestra presentation of a musical premiere from the film's classical soundtrack. The Red Violin, the opening night gala at the Toronto film festival, opens in its commercial run today.
"I guess I was fortunate because the first choice didn't want to do it," Jackson muses. "I didn't have an inferiority complex just because I was the second choice. That's because I thought their first choice was right on."
That would be Morgan Freeman. "Following Morgan is no problem," Jackson says of his long-time friend and mentor since their halcyon days together on the New York stage.
Jackson, relaxed and trim in shades and cool clothes in muted browns and blacks as he breezes through a day of interviews, also had no qualms about making a little Canadian film.
"It's not a little Canadian film," he protests gently with a beaming smile. "It's a BIG film in my mind. But that's not even why I did it. I actually did it because I thought the story was fantastic and I wanted to be part of it.
"It's sweeping, it is an epic in the great Hollywood sense of what an epic is. It is also very independent. There is not a big machine behind this film. The film is driven by the passion of the writers and director and producers. They put a lot of love into it and it transfers to an audience in a very palpable way."
Jackson plays a New York expert hired by a Montreal auction house to assess a collection of instruments being sold by the government of China. Jackson and his accomplice, a Canadian violin restorer played by co-writer Don McKellar, hatch a plot together that involves a mysterious four-centuries-old red violin.
Jackson's character is morally ambiguous. "That's always appealing," confesses Jackson, "because there is something about good guys -- they don't have enough of an agenda.
"Not to mention that what he does is something very foreign to me and I like to do roles that allow me to discover hidden things about myself and to watch other characters and what they do. I got a lot of information out of it."
In contrast, Jackson this week just finished shooting what he calls one of his "popcorn" movies, The Deep Blue Sea, on location in Mexico. "It's not quite so deep," Jackson laughs. "It's a monster chase movie. The attitude is kind of different."
Jackson won't choose between the extremes. "It depends on your thirst. I tend to have a career that's built on diversity mainly because I came from the theatre. And it never occured to me I could play the same guy over and over again and make a living out of it.
"I did this particular popcorn movie (The Deep Blue Sea is a thriller about genetically enhanced sharks) because I always wanted to do a monster movie. I've watched them all my life. Now I want to do a slasher movie because I watched them. And I want to do a Hong Kong film because I watched them.
"I'd love to do a western. I could just imagine myself as a cowboy. And that's part of what this business is, being able to do things that you fantasize about as a child. A lot of these things are kids games.
"Then there are movies that have a point, or that have some social relevance or some artistic relevance, like The Red Violin, and you do those because they have real people in them who have real emotions and you want to be part of something that has a greater meaning."