HOLLYWOOD -- Samuel L. Jackson is a man for all seasons, reasons and roles.

If any prominent actor in Hollywood is co-starring in more movies than the 53-year-old Jackson -- now that Michael Caine has slowed his once frenetic pace at the age of 69 -- then he or she is bizarrely keeping it a secret.

And Jackson, freed from often suffocating restrictions since his triumph in Pulp Fiction in 1994, is doing it with glee.

"He has handled mainline sentimental roles very well, but anyone not letting his humour loose is missing the real point," says film historian David Thomson in The New Biographical Dictionary Of Film, which is in stores Tuesday. "Samuel Jackson is his own man, but if you propose that he is also Morgan Freeman cut directly with Eddie Murphy, then I think you begin to understand his terrific popularity."

Jackson is next up on screen, with humour, in Ronny Yu's

Formula 51. This is a violent British-Canadian action-comedy set primarily in Liverpool and directed two years ago by one of Hong Kong's veteran martial arts movie gurus.

In this multinational, multi-genre, hybrid project, which was originally called The 51st State, Jackson plays an ultra-cool American pharmaceutical genius. He has whipped up a miracle recreational drug that he is planning to sell for millions to British gangsters. His trademark is a Scottish kilt. The movie opens Friday.

Earlier in 2002, we saw Jackson repeat his role as Jedi Knight Mace Windu in Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack Of The Clones. His trademark was the first lightsabre in royal purple. That movie is due Nov. 12 on VHS and DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Jackson also co-starred this summer in Vin Diesel's breakout action thriller XXX. He played U.S. spy boss Augustus Gibbons, who dragoons Diesel into service. Jackson's trademark, worn as a badge of courage, was a horrid scar that disfigures one side of his face. That movie is due Dec. 31 on VHS and DVD from Columbia TriStar Home Video.

In April, Jackson excelled in Changing Lanes, with Ben Affleck. His trademark, expressed in his grim-faced, repressed anger, was a battle with alcoholism. Jackson struggled with alcohol and drug addiction himself until cleaning up a decade ago. That movie was released Sept. 10 on VHS and DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment.

Also awaiting release is Bob Rafelson's The House On Turk Street, a Dashiell Hammett crime thriller in which

Jackson co-stars with Milla Jovovich.

Coming in 2003 is John McTiernan's Basic, a military thriller in which Jackson co-stars with John Travolta; Philip Kaufman's Blackout, a crime thriller in which he appears opposite Ashley Judd; and Clark Johnson's S.W.A.T., a police thriller which is now in rehearsals to shoot in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Jackson is committed to an XXX sequel for 2004 and the final Star Wars instalment in 2005.

The man likes to play. That is why he has gravitated to action, to police stories, to gangster movies and to crazy stuff such as the kinetic Formula 51.

"I've always liked pure morality tales," Jackson tells The Sun, fresh from the tactical training sessions for S.W.A.T. "As kids, we're fed them because we don't have to analyze character and character development or a red herring here or there, or stuff like that. We just go for good versus evil or themes of loyalty or an easy theme to follow.

"That's what most Hong Kong films are. They're about loyalty, they're about brotherhood, they're about the family, they're about the gang as family and they're about all that stuff. So they're easy to watch.

"And the set pieces on the inside of them are very exciting to me and the action part appeals to the kid in me -- the running, the jumping, the fighting, the shooting, the hip kind of banter between the characters. So I've always liked the simplicity of them."

Think about it and you see why Jackson has been attracted to and has operated in many of his most prominent movies, including XXX and the Star Wars series. Formula 51 is more of the same in terms of his participation.

"It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek movie," he says, denying suggestions that it comes across on screen as excessively violent, despite heaps of corpses and buckets of blood.

It also piqued his interest that the Hong Kong sensibilities that Yu infused into the story were plunked down inside the traditions of the British gangster genre.

"For me, it's not quite the gangster picture that I always envisioned British gangster movies to be, ever since I saw The Long Good Friday and The Krays and all that other stuff. Yet I've always wanted to do one or be a part of one and this was kind of an opportunity to do one, but in a very different kind of way.

"We do have some very nefarious characters in this script -- but they're also fun. They're fun kind of gangsters. They're dangerous but they're unique to us, as an American audience."

Among others, Jackson is talking about the motor-mouthing, football-obsessed thug played by Robert Carlyle, the femme fatale assassin played by Emily Mortimer, the lunatic club owner played by Rhys Ifans and the psychotic and reptilian American drug lord played by Meat Loaf.

Which brings Jackson to the subject of the long delay in releasing Formula 51, which is overdue by at least a year. After Toronto-based Alliance Atlantis got the project off the ground, they sold it worldwide. Among the buyers was Sony in the U.S. Now Jackson says that Sony executives don't seem to know what to do with a movie such as Formula 51.

"I don't know what they saw that they bought," he says sarcastically. He explains that Sony suits objected to his kilt and to the Britishness of the Brit characters. "I guess it was one of the things I was fighting with the studio about for a while after they bought it," Jackson says of the Brit accents.

The Americans were worried that home audiences would not understand what people such as Carlyle were saying. Jackson figures that's the point -- that his character, an American, is in England trying to figure them out too.

As for the kilt, the arguments got ridiculous.

Says Jackson: "There was a whole thing about, 'Well, we're not sure that an audience wants to see you in a kilt!' So they actually paid for a poll (to determine reactions)."

As a result, Sony did not want to picture Jackson in his kilt on the poster. "But it's part of the story. I think it's one of the things that is going to bring people into the movie, rather than take them away.

"Then they (Sony executives) started talking about trying to digitally take the kilt out of the movie. Hold it!"

Don't worry, you'll see him in a kilt on screen, as well as totally naked in a rear view shot at the end of the movie. Samuel Leroy Jackson knows how to let his humour loose, even if Hollywood studio execs are still missing the point.


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