Actor Samuel L. Jackson claims he would have been an Oscar contender for his work on the 1996 drama “A Time to Kill” if certain scenes hadn’t been cut from the movie.

Jackson told Vulture during a July interview that some of the hardest-hitting scenes from the film, which was based on a John Grisham novel by the same name, were ultimately left on the cutting room floor.

“But also the things they took out kept me from getting an Oscar,” the actor said. “‘Really, motherf***ers? You just took that sh** from me?’ My first day working on that film, I did a speech in a room with an actor and the whole f***ing set was in tears when I finished. I was like, ‘Okay. I’m on the right page.’”

The 73-year-old star has appeared in highly acclaimed films over the years but has never won an Academy Award.

Jackson has a theory on why the scenes were deleted, claiming it was because they were too good and would have elevated the status of his supporting role. 

“That sh** is not in the movie!” he continued. “And I know why it’s not. Because it wasn’t my movie, and they weren’t trying to make me a star. That was one of the first times that I saw that sh** happen. There are things that I’ve done in other movies where I said, ‘Wait a minute. Why did you take that moment out of the movie?’ Because the moment, in that movie, it’s bigger than the movie.”

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“A Time to Kill” also stars Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, and Matthew McConaughey. Jackson plays Carl Lee Hailey, a father accused of killing two white men who abducted, raped, and violently beat his 10-year-old daughter. The film received mixed reviews and was a commercial success, bringing in $152 million at the worldwide box office.

“In ‘A Time to Kill,’ when I kill those guys, I kill them because my daughter needs to know that those guys are not on the planet anymore and they will never hurt her again — that I will do anything to protect her. That’s how I played that character throughout,” Jackson told the outlet.

“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. 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***?’”