Samuel L. Jackson claims deleted scenes in A Time to Kill cost him an Oscar

Samuel L. Jackson has claimed he would have won an Oscar for the 1996 movie A Time to Kill if his key moments weren't cut.

In Joel Schumacher's legal drama, Jackson starred alongside Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey and portrayed Carl Lee Hailey, a man on trial in Mississippi for killing the two men who raped his daughter.

During an interview with Vulture, the Marvel actor insisted he was robbed of the chance to win an Oscar when key moments from his performance were left on the cutting room floor.

"The things they took out kept me from getting an Oscar. Really, motherf**kers? You just took that s**t from me?" Jackson said. "My first day working on that film, I did a speech in a room with an actor and the whole f**king set was in tears when I finished. I was like, 'Okay. I'm on the right page.' That s**t is not in the movie! And I know why it's not. Because it wasn't my movie, and they weren't trying to make me a star."

The 74-year-old explained that he played his character with nuance and tried to convey that Carl committed murder to protect his daughter and let her know they will never be able to hurt her again.

"That's how I played that character throughout. And there were specific things we shot, things I did to make sure that she understood that, but in the editing process, they got taken out," he added. "And it looked like I killed those dudes and then planned every move to make sure that I was going to get away with it. When I saw it, I was sitting there like, 'What the f**k?'"

Jackson was only been nominated for an Oscar once - for his supporting role in 1994's Pulp Fiction. He told The Times last year that he "should have won" the award instead of Martin Landau for Ed Wood.

The Django Unchained star was bestowed with an Honorary Oscar in 2022.