For fans of movies big and small, Samuel L. Jackson is a fact of life, a presence so unavoidable his image may as well be pre-burned onto the reels of the 35mm film Hollywood trades in.

Jackson practices his craft at a furious clip, appearing in three, four, sometimes five films a year — a work ethic more in line with Hong Kong than Hollywood.

But it's the depth of Jackson's contributions to acting and not just the length of his filmography that earned the 56-year-old actor a special recognition from the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival at a ceremony last night at The Royal Hawaiian.

Jackson, who is staying in Honolulu through the weekend, was awarded the International Achievement in Acting Award acknowledging his work in both big-budget blockbusters and small independent films.

He has appeared in more than 80 films over his 30-plus-year career. His films have generated a estimated $3.8 billion in sales, setting a record for one actor.

Jackson broke out with a stirring star turn as Gator in Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" and then cemented his star status as the Bible-quoting, Jheri-curled hit man Jules in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."

And though Jackson had paid his dues twice over, it seemed to many casual filmgoers that he had appeared spontaneously as a full-blown Hollywood heavyweight.

"A lot of people think that," said Jackson. "But then they look back and go, 'Oh, you were in this?' and 'Oh, you were in that?' "

Jackson honed his acting skills doing public theater in New York and was once an understudy to Morgan Freeman, another prolific screen actor.

"In the theater, you always tend to do a play, audition for a play and rehearse a play, usually all at the same time," said Jackson. "You're constantly on the lookout for a job, just making sure that you're working. Because of that work ethic, we still continue to do things we've always done.

"We do small jobs, we do big jobs," he said. "We're from the school of 'there are no small jobs, only small actors.' "

From the beginning, Jackson told his agents and managers that he didn't want to be limited to roles intended specifically for an African-American man. With box-office success has come the credibility to leverage better opportunities.

"It's totally incumbent on the actor to not be pigeonholed that way," he said.

Since "Pulp Fiction," Jackson has been in a better position to select which projects he wants to accept. But with that luxury comes a different kind of responsibility.

"You go to the audition and you hope that somebody will give you that job because you were the best person that came in," he said. "But when you reach this particular place because you give the audience a certain kind of satisfaction, you have to find stories that resonate and characters on the inside of those stories that allow the audience to experience you the way they've always experienced you.

"It's a much more difficult job," he said. "It's not that you walked in the room and they gave you the job because you had the best audition. You made the choice to do this particular thing, and you're responsible for how that particular things turns out."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.