In Hollywood, it's commonplace to have celebrity couples look cute together, become an item, get married, only to get divorced years later.
So when we hear of a couple making it to 44 years, that's something we have to talk about.
“The secret to our success? Well, I guess we still love each other,” the 75-year-old exclusively shared to Good Morning America.
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And though four decades seem like eons for celebrity romances, the Oscar-nominated actor explained that relationships in Hollywood are little different from relationships elsewhere. “[Couples are] always breaking up in neighborhoods all over the world,” he said.
“Our job is just a job, you go to work, we go to work,” Jackson added. “If I’m at home working, I love coming home and sleeping in my bed.
I was working a lot of other different places, but she comes to visit. You know, we both come from the theater.
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She’s on Broadway right now doing To Kill a Mockingbird, I’m out in the world doing movies.
We understand the bond we have, the commonality of experiences, the commonality of joy of the theater and of our lives and of our daughter’s life, so it’s easy for us to stay connected.”
And Samuel will never forget it. In fact, he has his wife to thank for literally getting him where he is now.
The beloved actor paid tribute to his wife LaTanya, 72, and their 38-year-old daughter Zoe when he picked up the Lifetime Achievement Award at He praised his loved ones for urging him to go to rehab after finding him passed out one day.
He said: "The other two people that challenged me on a regular basis are my foundation and support, my daughter Zoe and my wife LaTanya."
After what he calls a “crack-induced” meltdown,
Jackson’s then 8-year-old daughter and wife LaTanya, discovered Jackson on the kitchen floor surrounded by drugs and paraphernalia. After not too much convincing, Sam entered rehab soon after.
"The two women that actually found me passed out on the floor after I left somebody's bachelor party and put me in rehab the next day.
And supported me and pushed me and give me a reason to get up and go and chase it day after day after day."
“I was a f**king drug addict and I was out of my mind a lot of the time, but I had a good reputation,” Jackson told The Guardian in an interview in early 2016.
“I was doing Pulitzer-Prize-winning plays.
I was working with people who made me better, who challenged me.
So I was doing things the right way, it was just that one thing that was in the way — my addiction,” he continued.
It was Richardson who convinced her husband that his personal health wouldn’t be the only benefit of getting clean.
She urged Jackson to consider how his acting might evolve without the influence of drugs and alcohol.
“I’ve always had my wife LaTanya, who’s my harshest critic,” he recalled. “She’d say: ‘You’re so intelligent that the first time you read something, you think you understand it intellectually and emotionally ... But there’s no blood in it.”
And the greatest roles of Jackson’s career wouldn’t emerge until he got clean, an experience he describes as a door blowing wide open.
“It wasn’t until I got sober that I knew fully what she meant,” said Jackson. “Before, I used to do stuff on stage and kinda look for the reaction from the audience — ‘Aha! I got ‘em good that time!’
And once I was able to ignore that, and focus on the relationships with the people I was onstage with, I was finally able to blossom into whatever I might think I am now.”
Here's to wishing them another 40+ years together!
