Samuel L. Jackson comes from a family with high expectations. If he failed to make good grades, his parents would ground him. That meant no football, no basketball, no band, no hanging out until he turned around his academic performance.

"I was educated in a segregated school and I had black teachers that had taught my mother and her brothers and sisters, so they knew what the expectations were in my house; they knew I was expected to go to college," says Jackson, who was born in Washington, D. C. and raised in Chattanooga, Tenn. during the 1950s and 1960s.

While his friends headed to football practice, Jackson went to his room or to the library to read literature and study calculus. Understandably he was somewhat resentful, but he earned his high school diploma and was accepted at Morehouse College near Atlanta, one of the most prestigious African-American colleges in the country.

It was there that he began to appreciate having grown up in such a nurturing environment surrounded by people who cared enough about him to ensure that he got a quality education. (His love of education was passed on to his daughter, Zoe, who graduated from Vassar last spring.)

So when Jackson was approached about portraying Ken Carter, the California high school basketball coach who benched his entire team after some of the players failed to meet academic standards, the Oscar-nominated actor jumped on it.

As the title character in "Coach Carter," Jackson portrays an unrelenting coach who turns around his team's mediocre performance on the court then holds his players accountable to an agreement they signed promising to maintain a "C" average. His decision to bench the team just as it was headed toward a regional championship during the 1998-99 school year incurred the wrath of players, school officials and residents in working class Richmond, CA.

Carter stuck to his guns, though, and refused to allow his players to play or even practice until they achieved the 2.0 grade point average spelled out in their agreement.

"He just totally believes that mistaken belief that most adults have that kids want to be held accountable," Jackson says, laughing.

Jackson, 56, met Carter, now a youth advocate in Richmond, at a basketball game at the school where he coached for five seasons.

"Just talking to him about the game and about his philosophy while he was trying to make these kids go to class is what informed me," Jackson says. "I found out that we aren't that different. He's not that different from my parents."

Like the character he plays, Jackson is concerned about the future of young African-American men and fears that too much emphasis is placed within the community on athletics over academic excellence.

"There are thousands of kids that play basketball in college in America and out of those thousands of kids there's only, what, 300 jobs in the NBA. So what's the percentage of these kids making it?" he asks rhetorically. "Someone needs to be there to emphasize the fact that they need to get an education."

All of Carter's players involved in the lockout ended up going to college and though some of them played for college teams, none entered the NBA. Instead they have become teachers and other professionals. Carter's son, who played for the team, is in medical school.