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For the Fresh Prince, films are family business

Like father, like son: On the set of The Pursuit of Happyness, opening next week, Will Smith was "always in character. Always," says son and co-star Jaden who beat out 100 kids for his part.

Enlarge By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY

Like father, like son: On the set of The Pursuit of Happyness, opening next week, Will Smith was "always in character. Always," says son and co-star Jaden who beat out 100 kids for his part.

WILL BY THE NUMBERS

Domestic box office receipts for Will Smith's films (in 2006 dollars):

-Hitch (2005): $182.6 million

-Shark Tale (2004): $170.8 million

-I, Robot (2004): $153.8 million

-Bad Boys II (2003): $150.9 million

-Men in Black II (2002): $212.3 million

-Ali (2001): $65.9 million

-The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000): $36 million

-Wild Wild West (1999): $137 million

-Enemy of the State (1998): $137.3 million

-Men in Black (1997): $313.3 million

-Independence Day (1996): $391.4 million

-Bad Boys (1995): $86.6 million

-Six Degrees of Separation (1993): $8.9 million

Source: Nielsen EDI; USA TODAY analysis by Anthony DeBarros

By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Will Smith doesn't stroll. He strides. His every step has a purpose, his every word a point.

"I planned every movement of my career up until this point, starting with probably midway through The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when I started choosing movies," he says, leaning forward, his brown eyes beacons of intensity.

"What we call luck, what we call chance, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. If you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready."

Smith has meticulously plotted his ascent and today is the person least surprised by where he finds himself: as perhaps one of Hollywood's most bankable and appealing leading men.

If money talks, then Smith, 38, delivers the numbers. He commands more than $20 million a movie, and the last three films he has headlined — 2003's Bad Boys II, 2004's I, Robot and 2005's Hitch— have grossed more than $400 million total in the USA.

With his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, by his side, the father of Trey, 13, Jaden, 8, and Willow, 6, has soared up the A-list without the slightest whiff of scandal and with a burnished all-American image.

"He has such a definite personality, and it transcends issues of complexion or culture or ethnicity," says Michael Mann, who directed Smith to a best-actor Oscar nomination for 2001's Ali.

Smith mixes the popcorn with the potent, as in The Pursuit of Happyness, which opens Dec. 15 amid positive buzz and an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey.

This time, Smith plays the real-life Chris Gardner, a single father with big dreams of becoming a stockbroker. He interns at a brokerage by day and sleeps in homeless shelters, subway stations and motels with his son at night.

Despite Smith's multimillion-dollar paychecks, he says he related to Gardner's single-minded drive to make something of himself — with one crucial variation.

"When I was broke, it was different, because I was by myself. It is a completely different world to be broke by yourself than to be broke with a child."

Like Gardner, who in the movie has his bank account garnished by the IRS, Smith had a run-in with the tax man when he was starting out as rapper the Fresh Prince with his sidekick Jazzy Jeff.

"When the IRS came and took all my stuff, I was by myself. Jeff and I had one of the first 900 numbers. We made a lot of money," Smith says. "We didn't purposely not pay taxes. You get paid in cash, and you forget those things. But being down in that situation was so different from the feeling of walking in Chris Gardner's steps, that feeling of ultimate parental failure."

The victim of Gardner's life is his son, Christopher, played in the film by Smith's own offspring Jaden.

Playing his dad's son in the film wasn't a cheery cakewalk. Jaden has to cry, particularly in one ravaging scene in which he loses the one toy he has left and a stressed-out Smith gets rough. Jaden says he thought of "sad things" to bring on the waterworks but won't reveal details.

And Italian director Gabriele Muccino, handpicked by Smith, says getting physical with his son proved tough for Smith. "A real father gets mad at his son. I wanted to push," Muccino says. "The scene was difficult for both of them, for Will because he has to be so mad at his son, and for his son because he has to cry." Jaden "really put himself into this kid's shoes. It took five or 10 seconds. He was ready, and he was crying."

The Smiths had no qualms about giving their son such a high-profile role in a major studio release. "Anytime you can introduce your children to a business or a potential career and something that has fulfilled you and can potentially fulfill them, and it happens to be in your greatest sphere of knowledge, that's unbeatable," Smith says.

Plus, "the world is going to be hard, no matter what he chooses to do. Being in a field that I understand is beautiful for me. I'd much rather he be an actor than a subatomic physicist."

Jaden, who sits in on part of the interview with his father, sprawls across his lap. "Let's try to get settled," Smith says, urging his son to focus on the interview and not his PlayStation Portable. "You're at work, buddy. You don't play video games at work."

His son lolls backward in Smith's arms, playfully punches his dad's palms and gets a kiss on his forehead. Intermittently, he throws in a few words, as his mom watches the interview from an easy chair nearby.

Hollywood in their blood

In a sense, Smith's children were raised to be on camera; Trey (from Smith's first marriage) was a special correspondent for Access Hollywood, and Willow stars as Smith's daughter in next fall's I Am Legend. It all started when Smith bought a video camera for one of Trey's birthdays and shot home movies featuring his kids.

On the Happyness set, Jaden says, Smith is "always in character. Always."

"We had a little bit of fun, right?" Smith asks. "We had night shoots one time when it was hard." Responds Jaden: "We played when it wasn't a scene."

A late-night one involved a slice of pie. "I didn't want to eat that pizza," the boy says. "I don't even like the crust of the pizza, so I put the crust in my mouth, and I pretended like I bit it, but I didn't."

Says his dad: "See, that was an acting trick I taught you! Where I took a bite out of the pizza for him and when they said 'action,' he just put his mouth over the bite mark, and he had a piece of crust in his mouth so he pretended like he was chewing it."

The Smiths say Jaden came to his starring role by accident, not default, beating out 100 kids for the part. "He wanted to audition," Pinkett Smith says with a dismissive roll of her eyes. "So we said, 'All right.' "

Jaden, who wants to keep acting and longs to appear on Disney's That's So Raven or The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, starts scribbling on a pad of paper.

"Are you done?" his dad asks. "You're done. He's drifting."

"Daddy, what's drifting?" Jaden asks.

"That's drifting," Smith responds, holding up the sheet of paper with gibberish on it. "We're trying to let him find his own tempo." Jaden opts to be near his father and moves away to play video games under the supervision of his mom.

Ask anyone about Smith's own tempo, and his co-stars make him sound like the Energizer bunny. Smith has "boundless energy. He's a real force of nature," says Thandie Newton, who plays his embittered wife in Happyness.

When he's out, Smith hugs reporters, high-fives fans and beams that ear-to-ear grin of his. He exudes buoyancy and confidence and believes he could be president, although he denies any plans to run for office. And he could learn to fly the space shuttle.

"I have no illusions, no doubts at all," he says. "There's a power in believing something that manifests itself in reality."

Ever since the Philly native broke out as a rapper 20 years ago, ultimately winning four Grammys, he has never deviated from his clean-cut, upbeat public persona. At times, you get a peek behind his game face. When he arrives for a photo shoot earlier that day, his expression is serious and focused, that grin invisible.

"Will's a smart man. When we work, we work really hard. But it's always fun, a lot of goofing around," Mann says. "On Ali, I'd have Will and Jamie Foxx and Jon Voight, all cracking jokes and basically doing standup for 1,000 extras."

He always has been uncompromising, even when playing a goofy, gangly kid living with his rich relatives on NBC's hit The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 to 1996. Even then, his co-star Alfonso Ribeiro says, Smith demanded "perfection. When people don't want perfection, that's probably the only thing that gets him upset."

Smith also is a chivalrous actor, says Mann, who's also producing Smith's 2008 release Tonight, He Comes. "A girl on the set makes a move and winds up exposing herself, and out of the corner of your eye, you see Will look away."

Eva Mendes, who co-starred with Smith in the 2005 comedy smash Hitch, says the actor is "a brainiac dork. He's an avid reader. When I met him, I thought, 'Oh my God, the Fresh Prince is an intellectual.' "

The Smiths at home

The Smiths, for all their bonhomie in public, remain a private couple. They rarely go out, opting for nights at home watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel or playing Monopoly or Crazy Eights. Perhaps Pinkett Smith and Willow might bake a cake or sugar cookies.

"(It's) a whole lot of kids and a whole lot of just sitting around and kicking it," Pinkett Smith says. "We're a pretty boring crowd."

The secret to their nearly nine-year union is a mix of the sexy and the cerebral, she says. "La Perla (lingerie) and communication. Gotta keep it right in the bedroom and keep talking, and that will handle everything," says Pinkett Smith.

As parents, the Smiths view themselves as guides rather than disciplinarians.

"We feel that we are partners in their life, but they are responsible for their lives," Smith says. "Something we noticed in our upbringing and specifically in the black community coming out of slavery in the United States — children were dealt with in the master-slave relationship. We're trying to break the cycle of 'beat them when they do something wrong.' If you get them used to a master-slave relationship, when they leave your home, they're going to be looking for a master. We want them to be looking for partners."

They're home-schooling their three kids.

"There are specific things we think our children need to know that aren't necessarily covered in the industrial-era traditional education," Smith says as his wife nods. "First and foremost is their ability to communicate with people. The quality of your relationships and the quality of the groups of which you are a member are more important than the Pythagorean theorem could ever be."

Smith gets ever more impassioned. "I'm 38 years old, and I'm just getting an understanding of what life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness means," he says. "Kids need to know that in kindergarten. They need to be interacting with one another in a way that will further their group and their individual ability to survive."

He's friends with vocal Scientologist Tom Cruise and attended Cruise's wedding in Italy. Although Smith has learned about the controversial religion, he has not converted to it. He says he's a connoisseur of all faiths.

"I want to go on the hajj to Mecca," Smith says. "I don't believe in religious separatism. I love people, and I don't believe that the twin towers getting knocked down means all Muslims are bad.

"I was raised in a resurrection Baptist church in Philadelphia, and my grandmother was a devout member of the church. The things that I believe are 90% morally what I learned growing up. But the additions that Jada and I have made — we've traveled around the world."

They have been "to India, and United Arab Emirates, and to Jordan and to Jerusalem. We are students of world religions."

He believes in the "power of the individual, of the human spirit to overcome."

That's why you won't catch him playing a morally bankrupt Hannibal Lecter-type serial killer anytime soon.

"It's the reason I'm attracted to happy endings. I really believe you can do that, you can will that into existence."

Posted 12/6/2006 12:00 AM ET

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-1...htm?POE=LIFISVA

[MissAshley]

thnx Tim, great read :2thumbs:

[Jazzy Julie]

thanx

[Sandy]

thanks!! :2thumbs:

[Jonny 5]

thanks very much for that. didn't know WIllow was gonna be playing Will's daughter, maybe I should visit willywood more often :lol: