Men in Black, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Pursuit of Happyness
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$300 Million
"...where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy's sleeping? I'm working."
From rapper to TV star to one of Hollywood's biggest leading men, Will Smith is a rarity in the entertainment business as a man who has reinvented his career time and again without ever straying from being the same old Will that so many of us grew up with. What many fans may not realize is that the actor didn't simply luck into his fame, it has been a carefully orchestrated climb to the top.
West Philadelphia, Born And Raised
Born September 25, 1968 in Philadelphia to US Air Force veteran Willard Carroll Smith Sr. and mother Caroline, Will Smith showed promise as a student from a young age. He won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but ultimately turned down academic pursuits so that he could focus on his promising rap career.
Smith and friend Jeffrey Townes, better known as DJ Jazzy Jeff, had been friends since childhood, first working together in 1985 when the DJ was working a house party near the Smith family home, and enlisted Will as his hype man. The two were a natural fit, building a reputation on the local house party scene. Soon they would recruit Ready Rock C as their beatboxer and release their first single "Girls Ain't Nothing but Trouble" (1986). The song was a hit. Before Will even graduated high school he was already a rap star.
A full album, Rock the House (1986) would follow, and the pair would develop reputation for profanity-free, party-friendly rap songs. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince held their own corner of the industry as a duo that kids loved and parents could condone.
"My first record came out while I was a senior in high school, which is dangerous."
Will Smith was making millions right out of high school. That sounds like every teenager's dream, but the reality of having that much money at such a young age can be more trouble than it's worth. Smith had no experience with finances and spent his money irresponsibly, ultimately being assessed by the IRS for a $2.8 million debt, having his income garnished and possessions claimed. By 1990 he had already gone from the top of the world to rock bottom.
This was when Will set forth with the plan to become "the biggest movie star in the world."
The Leading Man
Will's climb to movie stardom would kick off with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-96), a sitcom built around Will's rap persona. While working on this show, Will Smith would study the careers of successful actors and look for common characteristics between box office hits in order to inform his own selection of movie roles.
"I'm a student of patterns. At heart, I'm a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything."
His film career would kick off with the dramatic film Six Degrees of Separation (1993), followed by his first action role in Bad Boys (1995), co-starring with fellow sitcom star Martin Lawrence. Right away, Will Smith's studies were paying off, and Bad Boys was a major hit, earning over $141 million worldwide. A year later he would join the ensemble cast of Independence Day (1996), which quickly became the second biggest-earner in the history of film as of 1996. Only three movies in, Smith had already proven himself as a viable commodity in Hollywood. Men in Black (1997) only served to seal the deal, earning more than half a billion dollars worldwide and setting Will Smith up as, if not the biggest movie star in the world, at least somewhere high up on the A-list.
For a time it seemed that Will Smith could do no wrong. Then he turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix (1999) to star in Wild Wild West (1999).
The Matrix wound up setting the tone for all action movies to come. Wild Wild West turned out to be the first major flop of Will Smith's career. However, Will Smith had no real regrets about turning down The Matrix, admitting that he felt he was simply wrong for the part. "I would have absolutely messed up The Matrix."
Fortunately, Will had already built up enough of a reputation in Hollywood that he was able to bounce back right away. While the movie was a flop, the song "Wild Wild West" wound up being a successful single, leading Will's album Willennium (1999). Wild Wild West was a mere road bump on Will's ride to the top, and he would soon star in Ali (2001) as Muhammad Ali, which earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe. Bad Boys II (2003) grossed $270 million worldwide, becoming an action classic for its excessive, over-the-top approach, and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), co-starring son Jaden Smith, became one of the defining dramatic roles of Will's career.
A string of successful movies would follow, including Men in Black 3 (2012), grossing over $624 million around the globe. However, he would have another major flop in After Earth (2013), calling it "the most painful failure in my career." Following the failure of After Earth, Will Smith took a short hiatus from film, not taking another role until Focus (2015) with Margot Robbie a year and a half later. He would reteam with Robbie the next year in Suicide Squad (2016), starring as world class assassin Deadpool opposite Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. Although the supervillain-oriented film was met with lukewarm reviews, the chemistry between Smith and Robbie earned the pair some praise from critics and fans.
Will Smith has starred in his share of record-shattering films, as well as a handful of disappointments. In the grand scheme of things, however, the plan seems to be working. Having earned and lost millions of dollar at a young age, he has gone on to become one of the most sought-after and well-paid actors on the planet.
The question remains as to whether or not he's the biggest movie star in the world, but we can settle that with some hard evidence: Will Smith holds the record as the only actor to ever have eight movies in a row gross over $100 million in the US, and eleven consecutive films earning more than $150 million worldwide. He also holds the record as the only actor to ever star in eight consecutive films to open at number one. Overall, his films had earned almost eight billion dollar globally as of 2016. That's before we factor in Aladdin (2019). If that doesn't qualify someone to call themselves the world's biggest movie star, we're not sure what does.
"In my mind, I've always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y'all just didn't know yet."
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