Will Smith: Big Willie Style

Family is a crucial word in Smith’s vocabulary. If Pinkett believes this will be her only marriage, Smith says he knows it will be his last. His first marriage – in 1992, to Sheree Zampino – ended in divorce after producing Willard Smith Ill, or Trey, now five years old. Smith learned about the complications of divorce at thirteen, when his own parents split up. The son of Will Smith Sr., an Air Force veteran who now runs his own refrigeration company, and Caroline Smith, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon who worked for the Philadelphia School Board, Smith grew up in Philadelphia, one of four children. (“Every time we hang out with the Wayanses — there’s ten of them – Will comes home wanting a basketball team,” says a cautious Pinkett. “I can see three of our own and Trey.”)

Smith was only twelve when he hooked up with Jeff Townes to form DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, a rap duo whose clean, gangsta-free music garnered the two their first album deal when Smith was seventeen. Passing on college, Smith hit the road with Townes, topping the charts with such hits as “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”

At twenty-one, Smith – with no acting training – took on television as the star of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a hit sitcom that ran for six seasons on NBC. At twenty-five, Smith won his first starring role in a movie – in a drama, yet -playing a bisexual hustler of rich white folks in Six Degrees of Separation. Great reviews; small audiences. After that, Smith turned his more comic side to the cameras in a trio of blockbusters – Bad Boys, Independence Day and Men in Black – that shot his salary into the $20 million stratosphere occupied by the likes of Jim Carrey and Tom Cruise.

Now, with his box-office clout at a peak and his latest album, Big Willie Style, his biggest seller, Smith is getting serious about serious acting again. He co-stars in Enemy of the State, a thriller that casts Smith as a labor lawyer caught in a dangerous web of spies, mobsters and National Security agents. And when he finishes the comic western Wild, Wild West for Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld, Smith will most likely portray Muhammad Ali in Sonnenfeld’s Power and Grace.

Not bad for a big-eared kid from Philly whose rap got rapped for being too white-bread. In fact, the surprising thing about Smith today – he turned thirty on September 25th – is how street he is. “Will was far grittier, more ghetto, than I expected,” says a smiling Pinkett, who thinks her husband’s ambitions might one day take this Mr. Smith to Washington. “I can see him being a force in politics – he’s so passionate about it. And if he wanted to run for president, I’d be scared to death – about assassination – but I’d definitely be on the front lines with him. Whatever he wants to do, I’m there.”

But whatever it is that Will Smith ends up doing, you can be sure of one thing: It will be a family affair. You’re one of the few movie stars to actually claim they had a happy time growing up. I loved my childhood, deeply appreciate what it taught me.

You’ve spoken more about your father. Tell me about your mother. Is she pretty?
My mom’s fine! [Laughs] And, personalitywise, I’m a lot like her – more so than my dad. My room is out. She can’t sit still, just ups and goes. I’ll get a phone call that she’s on her way to Australia! When I was growing up, she was in charge of my emotional development. My father’s job was to beat me into shipshape [another laugh]. I don’t talk as much about her because it takes me to a real vulnerable space.

How would you describe your mother?
My more was this type of woman: When you’re learning to drive, you’re excited. You hop in the driver’s seat, start the car. But More would stand patiently outside on the passenger’s side. I’d say, “Mom, come on!” But she wouldn’t move. Finally I’d get it – jump out, run around, open the door, apologizing: “My fault, Morn, my fault.”

So she had your respect?
Definitely. My mother had that power over her sons. She’d be pissed off and say, “Just get out of my sight. I can’t look at you right now.”

Your mother must have been tough on you when it came to school.
Yeah. She was a hard-core educational disciplinarian. We lived with my grandmother and great-grandmother until I was three, and my grandmother was a serious wordster. She and my mother were the driving forces behind me speaking and performing well in school. When I first started writing rap, at twelve, I used expletives and four-letter words, because that’s what rap was. My grandmother got ahold of my rap book, read it and wrote in the back: “Dear Willard, truly intelligent people do not have to use these types of words to express themselves.” We’ve never talked about it, but from that day on, I didn’t use those words.