🍿 7 curiosities about the life and career of WILL SMITH!
Will Smith is a very talented actor and has fans all over the world.
But her career, oddly enough, has had its ups and downs (as has her love life).
Starring on the right foot in 1990's “Fresh Prince of Belair,” he is remembered to this day for his iconic character in one of the funniest and most moving series of all time.
But not everything was rosy for the actor. At the height of his career, he turned down an unbelievable role that almost ended up making him forgotten in Hollywood and has a very troubled marriage today.
Let's see 10 curiosities of the life and work of this incredible actor:
1 – WILL GAVE UP FROM COLLEGE
The actor almost ran for a place as a college student at the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), but chose to pursue his dream of being a rapper.
"My mom, who worked on the Philadelphia Board of Schools, had a friend at the MIT admissions office. I had high grades and they needed black students, so I probably would have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college. ,” the actor said in an interview.
2 – SMITH WAS ALMOST KILLED EARLY IN CAREER
Before stardom as a rapper and then as an actor, Smith was just a dreamer of success.
Still quite young and inexperienced, Smith remembers that he almost signed a contract with a bandit who would be his manager and almost paid with his life when he saw that he was getting into a robbery.
"Early in my music career I signed a contract with a gangster who then tried to shoot us," says Smith. "He was a fucked up gangster, but the bullets were real. He once hit our car with five or six shots. It was pretty scary, but you don't think about it while things are happening, you just try to run away. He would have killed us if he knew how to shoot for real."
3 – HE CHOOSE HIS OWN NAME IN “A CRAZY IN THE PIECE
Will Smith's contract with NBC said that the actor could choose the name of his character in "Fresh Prince of Belair". Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlon Banks), talked a lot about the possible choices.
Ribeiro even advised Smith to choose carefully because an eventual success of the series could make the character's name stronger than the actor's name.
As such, Will Smith chose to play someone named... Will Smith (which also reinforced the star's name as a brand).
NBC, the TV that was producing the series, tried to refuse these choices in every way, but Will was persistent and managed to put his own name in the biggest role of his life.
4 – WILL AND JAZZ WERE FRIENDS BEFORE THE SERIES
A good curiosity to remember is that Will and Jazz met long before the series "Fresh Prince of Belair ".
At the time, he was already successful with the duo "DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince" (remembering that the name of the series in the original is "Fresh Prince of Belair"), even winning an Emmy for "Parents Just Don' t Understand”.
5 – WILL SMITH REJECTED MATRIX
In one of the most mind-boggling decisions of all time, Will Smith turned down the Wachowski sisters' offer to star in one of the most groundbreaking action movies of all time.
In the late 1990s, after hits like “Bad Boys” (1995) and “Independence Day” (1996), Smith was invited to play the protagonist Neo in “The Matrix” (1999).
The actor, however, refused the proposal, and in an interview he said that he did not understand anything about the script, so the role went to another actor also loved by many: Keanu Reeves.
The icing on the cake was that, he refused to participate in the amazing "Matrix" to act in the terrible "Wild Wild West" (1999).
What went through Smith's head I don't know, but I'm glad this very wrong decision didn't affect his career.
6 – TROUBLED MARRIAGE
Will and Jada Smith have been together since 1997, and in September 2021 they revealed that they are no longer in a monogamous relationship and are now in an open relationship, despite rumors of the open relationship circulating for many years.
In an interview, Will confessed crying that this decision came from his wife Jada and that, despite not agreeing to an open marriage, he “accepts” living in a relationship like this so as not to lose his wife.
He loves her so much that he wouldn't know how to live without his wife, even though he knows she has relationships with other men.
7 – CONTROVERSY AT THE OSCAR
This is certainly the biggest controversy of his career.
At the 2022 Oscars, Will was the favorite to win the Oscar for best actor for the film “King Richard” (2021), where he plays a father of two world-famous tennis players and who is very present in raising his daughters.
At the Oscars presentation, actor and comedian Chris Rock makes a very unnecessary and strong joke with Will's wife.
Chris said he wanted to see Jada Smith play the movie “C.I.Jane 2”.
Explaining the context: Jada Smith shaved her hair in November 2021, as she suffers from Alopecia, an autoimmune disease caused by genetic factors, various stresses and the result of other diseases (such as hypothyroidism) that thins the hair strands and prevents their growth.
The film “C.I.Jane” that Chris Rock referred to is a film in which the actress Demi Moore shaves her head to enter the American army.
In other words: Chris Rock mocked Jada's illness, as he wanted to compare her to a character who also shaved her hair. The problem is one and very obvious: Jada didn't want to shave her head, she just shaved it because she saw that her hair was falling out and wanted to accept her condition.
Will Smith simply stood up, live at the Oscars, and slapped Chris Rock in the face, who didn't fight back.
And more: When Will returned to his seat, he yelled twice: “Get my wife's name out of your fucking mouth!”
It was a complete scandal: Chris Rock did not want to report it to the police and Will, in his speech at the Oscar win for best actor, apologized to the academy, to the public and said that he wanted to be a river for his family, because he wanted guide you to a better place.
And you? What did you think of the whole controversial life and career of Will Smith?
