The Legend of Will Smith

How One Man Built a Global Movie-Magnet Machine.

By Rebecca Wintesr Keegan
November 29, 2007

Will Smith plots his strategy for world domination from the head of the kingly wooden dining table in his sweeping Calabasas, Calif., home. "We call it Global Willing," says Smith of his travel itinerary to warm up the globe for his next film, I Am Legend, in which he plays the only survivor of a man-made plague that has wiped out humanity. "We're going to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Korea ..." It's the morning after Thanksgiving, and Smith, 39, is sleepy-eyed and unshaven after hosting 30 friends and family members for dinner. His wife Jada Pinkett Smith enters with breakfast and a kiss, asking, "Want jelly with that, baby?" Even Hollywood's Genghis Khan needs some tenderness before he sacks the box office.

With his ready grin, jug ears and baritone belly laugh, Smith's image is that of the happy-go-lucky Everyguy. But you don't accrue $4.4 billion in worldwide box-office receipts and two Oscar nominations without machine-like drive. Smith's four most recent movies--The Pursuit of Happyness, Hitch, Shark Tale and I, Robot--have each grossed more than $300 million worldwide, vaulting him into a category usually reserved for white guys named Tom. Because Smith has mastered the delicate art of appearing artless, few moviegoers realize that his is one of Hollywood's most meticulously planned and executed careers.

Willard Christopher Smith Jr. hatched his scheme for global supremacy at 16, after his first girlfriend cheated on him. "In my mind, she cheated because I wasn't good enough. I remember making the decision that I will never not be good enough again," he says. Sure, he may have overcompensated, but how else are movie stars made? Smith grew up the second of four children in middle-class West Philadelphia; his parents Willard and Caroline divorced when he was 13. From his father, who worked seven days a week running a refrigerator company, Smith inherited his work ethic. From his mother, a school-board employee, he derived the notion that "education is the elixir for all problems," he says. "Every problem Jada and I have ever had, we found the answer in a book." The Smiths have a family library stocked with everything from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism to homeschooling texts for their children--Willow, 7, and Jaden, 9, and Smith's son from his first marriage, Trey, 15.

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