Will Smith

Biography:

American actor, rapper, and film producer Willard Carroll Smith II was born on September 25, 1968. Aside from the Grammys, he has won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and four Golden Globes. With nearly $9.3 billion in global box office receipts as of 2024, he is among Hollywood’s most lucrative stars.

Smith’s acting career began with a fictionalized portrayal of himself on the NBC comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990–1996), for which he received two Golden Globe nominations in 1993 and 1994 for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Television Series.

In 1984 to 1994, he released five studio albums and the US Billboard Hot 100 top 20 singles “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” “A Nightmare on My Street,” “Summertime,” “Ring My Bell,” and “Boom! Shake the Room” as part of a hip-hop duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff. This is how he initially came to notice.

The US number-one singles “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It” and “Wild Wild West” were from his solo albums Big Willie Style (1997), Willennium (1999), Born to Reign (2002), and Lost and Found (2005) that he published. For his rap performances, he has won four Grammy Awards.

Smith became more well-known as the principal actor in the science fiction comedy Men in Black (1997) and the action movie Bad Boys (1995); he then returned to the character in multiple sequels. Following his breakout roles in the suspense films Enemy of the State (1998) and Independence Day (1996), he was nominated for two Academy Awards: one for Best Actor for his depictions of Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) and Muhammad Ali in Ali (2001).

In addition to the plays Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Concussion (2015), and Emancipation (2022), he starred in the financially successful blockbusters I, Robot (2004), Shark Tale (2004), Hitch (2005), I Am Legend (2007), Hancock (2008), Seven Pounds (2008), Suicide Squad (2016), and Aladdin (2019).

Smith was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Richard Williams in the biographical sports drama King Richard (2021). Shortly before Smith’s win at the 2022 event, presenter Chris Rock made an unscripted joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, for which Smith slapped Rock. Following the contentious event, which received a lot of media attention and criticism, Smith was forced to resign from the Academy and was prohibited from attending any of their events for ten years.

On September 25, 1968, in Philadelphia, Willard Carroll Smith II was born into a family consisting of Willard Carroll Smith Sr., a refrigeration engineer and member of the US Air Force, and Caroline (née Bright), a school board administrator. His mom is a Carnegie Mellon University alum.

Raised as a Baptist, he was raised in the Wynnefield area of West Philadelphia. He has two younger siblings, the twins Harry and Ellen, and an older sister, Pamela. He went to Overbrook High School and Our Lady of Lourdes, a private Catholic elementary school in Philadelphia. When he was thirteen, his parents got divorced, and they separated again around 2000.

At twelve, Smith started rapping. “Dear Willard, truly intelligent people do not need to use words like this to express themselves,” his grandma wrote on a page in the book after discovering a notebook of his lyrics, which he claimed contained “all little curse words.” Please prove to the world that you are as intelligent as we believe you to be. Smith claimed that this had an impact on his choice to refrain from using swearing in his songs.