Biography of Will Smith
Full name: Willard Carrol Smith II
Birthday: September 25 1968
Age: 53
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Education: Overbrook High School
Profession: Actor, film producer, & rapper
Will Smith’s Net worth: $350 million
Will Smith’s Awards & Accolades
Will Smith has won numerous honours throughout his career, including the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Richard Williams in the biopic King Richard (2021), who was the successful tennis players Venus and Serena Williams’ father and coach.
Smith also received awards from the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild for this role, as well as a producer nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
He has previously received nominations for the Golden Globe Award (5; for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Concussion), the Academy Award (2; for Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness), and the Screen Actors Guild Award (once for The Pursuit of Happyness).
He was honoured with the César Award in 2005, nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2005 for Fela!, and nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2021 for his work as a producer on Cobra Kai.
Will Smith has dabbled in hip hop in addition to acting and production work for film and stage. Four of these songs earned him Grammy Awards: “Parents Just Don’t Understand” for Best Rap Performance, “Summertime” for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, and “Men in Black” and “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It” for Best Rap Solo Performance.
He won the former two as a member of the duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.
His Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award nominations make him one of few black actors to be nominated for all four major entertainment awards in the US. As a true thespian, his Oscar win was not without drama.
Will Smith is also a best-selling author. His memoir, Will, a New York Times bestseller is both highly in demand and critically praised.
Will, co-written by Mark Manson, saw more readership and reviews after Will’s altercation with Chris Rock at the Oscars.
Will Smith’s Past Present Relationships:
Will Smith & Garcelle Beauvais (1990-1991)
Will Smith and Garcelle Beauvais frequently worked together in the early stages of his professional rise.
They co-starred in a few episodes of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” between 1992 and 1995 and “Wild Wild West” in 1999.
In 2020, Beauvais disclosed that she had a brief romance with Smith and went on to describe the attractions he held for her.
Beauvais revealed she dated Will before Zampino in a direct conversation with his ex-wife Sheree Zampino. The three then made fun of the fact that they were a trio!
Will Smith & Sheree Zampino (1992-1995)
Trey was born in November of the same year that Will Smith and Sheree Zampino were married and after a few years of marriage, Smith experienced a revelation.
He admitted on “Red Table Talk” that when he realized he loved Pinkett Smith, “I wasn’t with the person I was intended to be with,” adding that he broke down in a public restroom at the realization. In the end, it was Zampino who requested a divorce (again on Valentine’s Day), and they parted ways in 1995.
Will Smith is said to have dated Tyra Banks in 1993. Will Smith has been in a relationship with Jada Pinkett since 1997. There were rumours of their divorce in May.
Will Smith’s Acting Career
Will Smith’s persona was partially based on the 1990-starting television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It had six successful seasons on NBC before being cancelled at the star’s request.
Throughout its run, Smith received two Golden Globe Award nominations and worked as an executive producer on the show’s final season.
With Where the Day Takes You, Will Smith entered the big-screen world after finding success on television (1992).
Will Smith’s debut main role was in the motion picture adaptation of John Guare’s popular theatrical production Six Degrees of Separation (1993).
However, the action comedy-thriller Bad Boys (1995) proved to be a watershed moment in his film career.
While the film was not a critical hit, it grossed over $100 million worldwide, demonstrating Smith’s star power.
Independence Day, the year’s highest-grossing film, also starred him in 1996.
The next year, Will Smith enjoyed a box office success with the science-fiction comedy Men in Black, for which he also sang the Grammy-winning title song.
Sequels to the film were released in 2002 and 2012.
Will Smith also recorded his debut solo album, Big Willie Style, in 1997, which included the song “Gettin’ Jiggy wid It,” and Willennium two years later.
After starring in the gripping thriller Enemy of the State (1998), Will Smith continued to show off his extraordinary range as an actor in roles as diverse as a mysterious golf caddy in The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Muhammad Ali in the biopic Ali (2001), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, a cop from the near future in I Robot (2004), and a “date doctor” helping a romantically awkward man find love in Hitch (2005).
He acted in The Pursuit of Happyness the next year, and for his portrayal of a struggling single father, he received a second Oscar nomination for best actor.
Will Smith played a scientist who might be the last person on Earth after an outbreak in the 2007 film I Am Legend.
He played a superhero striving to change his negative reputation in Hancock (2008). And he portrayed a man looking for forgiveness after murdering seven people inadvertently in a vehicle accident in Seven Pounds (2008).
Smith went on to star in the science-fiction epic After Earth (2013), which was based on a concept he came up with, alongside his son Jaden.
Will Smith played a con man in the thriller Focus from 2015 and a doctor who uncovered the chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) epidemic among NFL players in the movie Concussion.
He portrayed Deadshot, an assassin, in the 2016 action film Suicide Squad, as well as a bereaved father in Collateral Beauty.
Will Smith played a police officer in the Netflix action movie Bright the following year, which is set in Los Angeles where both people and supernatural creatures live.
After then, Smith received the role of the genie in the 2019 family comedy Aladdin.
He played two roles in Gemini Man (2019): a retired assassin and his younger clone, the latter a digitally recreated version of Smith in his 20s.
Will Smith’s other credits from 2019 included the animated Spies in Disguise, in which he supplied the voice of a spy who is turned into a pigeon.
Smith then starred in Bad Boys for Life (2020), a sequel to his 1995 breakthrough film.
In 2021 Will Smith took the title role in King Richard, a biopic about the father of tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams. For his performance, Smith received the Oscar for best actor.
Will Smith’s Rap Career
At the age of 16, Will Smith went to a house party where the neighborhood DJ, DJ Jazzy Jeff, was playing. Townes’ hype man was late to the event, so Smith stepped in to emcee, and the two clicked right away.
Their first record, “Girl’s Ain’t Nothing But Trouble,” from 1986, which they collaborated on as DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, became an immediate hit. In 1987, the full-length debut Rock the House was inspired by this track. The brief album, which was released on the fledgling rap label Word-Up Records, served as an introduction to the duo’s entertaining but family-friendly rap approach.
In direct contrast to the harsh gangsta rap genre that was emerging at the same time, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince was free of profanity and offered a lighthearted view on youth and growing up.
On their second album, He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, released in 1988, they honed their style. It was a global hit that sold millions of copies and gave rise to numerous hit singles.
Will Smith won the inaugural Grammy for Best Rap Performance for the song “Parents Just Don’t Understand” while he was just out of high school.
In 1989, as Smith was experiencing financial difficulties as a result of underreporting his taxes, the third album And in This Corner… was released.
The next year, NBC’s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air helped him make the switch from rap celebrity to television star.
Smith rose to fame in the early 1990s by portraying a character that somewhat reflected features of his own life.
The program ran for six seasons and became immediately popular. As his acting career took off, he continued to make music; DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince released their fourth album, Homebase, in 1991.
The breezy hymn “Summertime,” which appeared on the album, became their biggest chart success and earned them another Grammy.
Code Red, a forgettable album released in 1993, would be DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s last release.
Big Willie Style, Will Smith’s debut album under his name, was released in 1997 and went multi-platinum in sales. It featured several well-known hits, such as “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” “Just the Two of Us,” and “Miami.”
He kept developing into a leading man actor, but his musical career started to suffer. Even though it made fewer sales and performed worse on the charts than its predecessor, 1999’s Willennium still sold double platinum figures.
With the third album Born to Reign released in 2002 and the comparatively self-aware Lost & Found released in 2005, this downward trend persisted. Smith was already a major movie star by this point, and Lost and Found would be his final record as a solo artist for the foreseeable future.
Will Smith continued to make music on occasion, contributing verses to songs by Marc Anthony, Logic, and his son Jaden Smith, as well as remixes of songs by Bomba Estéreo and Nicky Jam and the 2015 smash song “Fiesta” by Bomba Estéreo.
