Will Smith From Rapper To Hollywood A-lister

Famed actor/musician Will Smith was born Willard Carroll Smith Jr. on September 25, 1968, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to mother Caroline, a school board employee, and father Willard C. Smith, a refrigeration company owner. His middle class upbringing saw him attend the strict Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, despite his family’s observation of the Baptist faith. He went on to attend Overbrook High School..

After he met Jeff Townes at age 16, the duo launched a highly successful rap career as DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. Smith starred on the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for six seasons, before establishing himself as a Hollywood A- lister with Bad Boys (1995) and Independence Day (1996). He has since headlined such popular films as Men in Black (1997) and Hitch (2005), and earned Oscar nominations for Ali (2001) and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). Smith also earned acclaim for Concussion (2015), before returning to action fare with Suicide Squad (2016).

Music Career:

As teens, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince began producing music, but steered clear of the gangsta rap sound that was emerging from the West Coast by groups like N.W.A. The Fresh Prince rapped about teenage preoccupations in a clean, curse-free style that middle America found safe and entertaining. The pair’s first single, “Girls  Ain’t Nothing But Trouble,” was a hit in 1986. Their 1987 debut album, Rock the House, hit the Billboard Top 200, and made Smith a millionaire before the age of 18. The early success put any thoughts of attending college out of Smith’s mind.

Early on, it was reported that Smith had turned down a scholarship to Boston’s elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but Smith later dispelled the rumor when he told an interviewer: “My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college.”

In 1988 DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince continued their success with the album He’s The DJ, I’m The Rapper. Featuring the radio-friendly singles “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” “Brand New Funk,” and “Nightmare on My Street,” the album won the first ever Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance. It was followed in 1989 by And In This Corner…, which continued the pair’s rise to stardom.

Movies and TV Shows

‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’

Two years later, Smith began his remarkable crossover into acting. Drawing on his experiences with fledgling stardom, NBC signed Smith to headline a sitcom about a street-smart kid from Philadelphia who moves in with stuffy relatives in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel-Air. Playing on his rapper persona, and at times featuring his friend Towne, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was a huge success that ran for six seasons.

Nonetheless, he still got a huge big applause from movie critics as well as Where the Day Takes You,’ ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ ‘Bad Boys’ ‘Independence Day, ‘ Wild Wild West’,

After starring in the dramatic thriller Enemy of the State (1998), Smith continued to demonstrate his remarkable versatility as an actor, playing an enigmatic golf caddy in The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000); the boxer Muhammad Ali in the biopic Ali (2001), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. The 2001 biopic Ali, based on boxing legend Muhammad Ali, gave Smith the opportunity to regain his big-screen swagger. His turn as the charismatic boxing great saw Smith put in the performance of his life, training and disciplining himself to extraordinary lengths to do justice to the athleticism — and ego — of the titular character. The film underwhelmed at the box office despite a record-breaking opening day, but Smith’s performance was strong enough to garner him his first Academy Award nomination.

 The next year he starred in The Pursuit of Happyness, and his performance as a single father who overcomes adversity earned him a second Oscar nomination for best actor. Follow it , being a  lots of box-office movie such as: In I Am Legend (2007), Smith appeared as a scientist who is perhaps the last human on Earth following an epidemic.  Hancock (2008) featured Smith as a superhero trying to revamp his unpopular image, and in Seven Pounds (2008) he played a man seeking redemption after accidentally killing seven people in a car accident.

In 2016 Smith starred in the DC Comics blockbuster hit Suicide Squad, which became his most successful film since 1996’s Independence Day. However, In February 2019, Smith announced that he would not be returning for the Suicide Squad sequel. Around that time, a commercial during the Grammy Awards revealed him as a wisecracking Genie in Guy Ritchie’s live-action adaptation of Disney’s Aladdin, which went on to top $1 billion at the global box office following its May 2019 release.

 

 A happily dreamy family with beautiful wife and two talented

Smith has been married twice. His first marriage, to Sheree Zampino in 1992, lasted only three years but produced a son, Willard Smith III (b. 1992), also known as Trey.  He has been married to actress Jada Pinkett Smith since 1997. The two didn’t become a couple until 1995, when Will was going through a divorce from his first wife, Sheree  Zampino. Will and Zampino were separated at the time,  and Jada later confessed that she wishes she hadn’t started dating Will until the divorce was finalized. In an episode of her Facebook video series, Red Table Talk, Jada said, “Because I did not understand marriage, I did not understand divorce…I probably should have fell back

The couple’s son, Jaden, was born in 1998, and their daughter, Willow, was born in 2000. The loving affair between he and his second wife is definitely a launching point to make them become one of a sough- after couple artist of Hollywood. In 2004, the couple worked together to write the television series All of Us, which was a sitcom loosely based on their family. It went on to air for four reasons. During that same year, they founded the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation, which helps develop educational projects and family welfare for inner city youth.

It seems that the talented genes of Will and Jada are passed on to the offspring. Their two children: Jaden Christopher Syre Smith (born in 1998) – a potential child actor and Willow Camille Reign Smith (born in 2000) – a famous and talented child singer – are rising stars and most glorious in the sky of art.

Jaden Smith, if in the past, people used to know this boy’s name with the note that the son of the famous actor-singer Will Smith, in recent years Jaden Smith has escaped from the shadow of his father to is recognized as a talented independent actor of Hollywood.

The young superstar made his first step into the realm of the film industry when he starred in The Pursuit of Happyness with his father Will Smith. The child actor’s acting is completely amateur but surprisingly praised. Jaden Smith even won the Best Breakthrough Acting award at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards and four other career awards – a proud achievement for an 8-year-old actor. Two years later, Jaden Smith starred in the second film: The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring with actor Keanu Reeves.

The Karate Kid is the third film Jaden Smith will participate in. However, Jaden Smith is not really an acting prodigy. Every day, the first boy had to be busy with 3-hour exercises for every role he played. As a partner and instructor for Jaden, Jackie Chan said about his tiny colleague: “Jaden takes martial arts practice very seriously. I am extremely impressed with Jaden! He has all the qualities and professional ethics needed as longtime actors in the profession.

In addition to acting, Jaden Smith also performed with Canadian singer Justin Bieber performing the title song Never Say Never. This Never Say Never video clip is being loved by young people, hunted by the combination of two teen idols, Justin Bieber shows off his sweet voice and Jaden Smith shows off rap and dance skills.

Meanwhile, the 10-year-old sister of Jaden, Willow, is also no less inferior to the release of the song Whip My Hair and participated in the European tour of the pop prince. Not only that, Jay-Z also signed a contract to recruit Willow into his Roc Nation.

Many people believe that Jaden and Willow are famous mainly because of their parents’ aura but in fact there is no way to walk on the rose. The success of the 2 young Smiths does not come overnight, but is facilitated to join the entertainment industry very early. At the age of five, Jaden appeared on a sitcom like All of Us and starred with his father in several films such as The Pursuit of Happyness, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Meanwhile, at the age of 7, Willow appeared in Will Smith’s I Am Legend and a few years later acted with Abigail Breslin in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.

If there is any luck that Jaden and Willow have, it is born in an environment of art and the professional guidance, caring of parents – as well as two famous stars. And now, the Smith family is still working hard on the way to dominate the entertainment industry of the world.