“I absolutely believe I could be President of the United States”
President Smith, anyone? The 39-year-old star is already Newsweek’s Most Powerful Actor on the Planet, propelled to that position in April 2007 by a $4.4 billion career gross (I Am Legend has since taken it to just under $5 billion). So why not leader of the most powerful country on Earth?
When Will Smith was asked whether he would one day run for office, he
said: “I absolutely believe that – not that I would – but I absolutely
believe that I could be the President of the United States… I have a
vision, I know how to organise and move people and so if it were
something I decided I wanted to do, I could.”
Self-belief
pumps through Smith’s veins. Statements that would sound arrogant and
cocky coming from the mouths of others possess an almost innocent charm
when delivered by this hugely likeable man. It’s impossible to be
cynical around Will Smith.
Fresh fields
Born
Willard Christopher Smith Jr on September 25, 1968, Will grew up in
middle-class West Philadelphia and was a bright student. But at 17 he
skipped college to try for a record deal with his friend, Jeff Townes.
Performing as The Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff, the pair gave
themselves a year to make it. They didn’t need that long. Success came
quickly, and with it money.
In 1989 the duo won a Grammy but
inside a year Smith had squandered almost his entire fortune. At that
time, NBC was developing a sitcom that became The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Music-genius-turned-TV-producer Quincy Jones was brought on board, and,
legend has it, the near-broke Smith used a plane ticket given to Jazzy
Jeff to travel to LA and audition, successfully, in Jones’s living
room.
“I was 21 and I had never acted before,” he recalls.
“Quincy asked me about it and I was like, ‘Yeah, I can act…’ And I’m
thinking to myself, ‘No, you can’t…’ On the first day I’m standing
backstage and I’m scared stiff. But when I feel like that I want to
attack the fear.”
Box office knockout
When
he moved into movies, Smith soon became a fixture on the A-list,
earning the nickname ‘Mr July 4’ after three consecutive
record-breaking summer blockbusters: Independence Day, Men in Black and Wild Wild West.
But in 2001, Smith faced another pivotal moment in his career: the role of Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann’s biopic, Ali.
At first Smith was more than reluctant to take the role. “Can you
imagine what it would be like if you didn’t do him justice?” he said.
“But meeting Michael persuaded me I could do it.
“Michael had
broken down the training for me to become Ali into a three-tiered
syllabus. The first was the physical, and that was learning how to
fight. The second tier was mental and emotional. Then there was the
spiritual training. We had an Islamic studies teacher and that was
quite a journey, too.”
The pursuit of good acting
The Academy was impressed, and Smith got his first Oscar nomination for best actor. A second followed in 2006 for The Pursuit of Happyness, directed by Gabriele Muccino, which showed Smith could tackle mature, emotional roles.
“It
was definitely a conscious decision to try something different,” Smith
says. “There’s been a sense of mathematics and mechanics in the early
part of my career. Michael Mann threw all of that stuff out of the
window… Gabriele and Michael have opened me up to a new space.”
His
new approach to acting is to take the craft and dedication required
from a director like Mann or Muccino, and apply it to commercial films
such as I Am Legend and the superhero comedy Hancock. Not that there aren’t more visceral pleasures in big-budget action flicks. For Hancock (released in the UK in July), Smith did as many of his own stunts as possible.
“They
created a harness that actually enabled me to fly,” he reveals. “It’s
the equivalent of about 400 metres and maybe 35 metres into the air. So
I run and jump in the air and fly at probably 55km per hour. I guess I
can’t resist a challenge.”
Will to win
“There’s a movie called What the #$*! Do We Know?”
Smith says. “And one of the central ideas is that things only exist as
we observe their existence… For example, people say there is racism in
Hollywood, and you know that Hollywood is in America, so of course
there is racism. But if I acknowledge it as a boundary I actually give
it strength as a boundary. I refuse to make a plan B because it
detracts from plan A.”
Call it the Power of Positive Thinking,
or the Smith School of Success – whatever it is, it works. Maybe we
should call it the Will to Win manifesto. Smith for President? Don’t
bet against it.
This is an
edited version of our cover feature on Will Smith. To enjoy the full
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Story by Martyn Palmer