Jackson tortured snakes as a child

Samuel L Jackson had no problem working on new movie Snakes on a Plane because he regularly tortured snakes when he was a child.

The Pulp Fiction star grew up in rural Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was completely comfortable with the reptiles because he taught himself to differentiate poisonous species from harmless ones.

He explains: "I grew up in the country. When we were kids if we saw a snake, the snake was in a lot more trouble than we were!

"We'd chase it down and kind of do stuff to it. We knew the difference between the poisonous snakes and the non-poisonous snakes. We grew up around copper heads, cotton mouths and water moccasins along the Tennessee River."

Jackson claims his new movie gives people the wrong impression, because he never had any direct contact with the snakes while filming.

He adds: "In the last few weeks I've had a lot more contact with snakes than I had the whole time I was doing the movie shoot. I never touched a snake the whole time we were doing the movie. We couldn't have the snakes on set with us because there's a lot of chaos.

"When they come down and someone says: 'Snakes are loose on the plane', you would trample on the snakes and kill them and you can't do that, so we never had snakes on set!"