10 June 2008
Young Filmmaker - Will Smith
As a child in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, Will Smith earned the nickname "the Prince" for charming his friends. According to his official Web site [www.willsmith.net], at age 12 he began performing rap music, and by 16 he had become "The Fresh Prince," a well-known rapper, often performing with his friend "Jazzy Jeff."
At the same time, Smith was gaining attention for his acting; at age 22 he moved to California to star in a comedy television series called The Fresh Prince of Belair (Belair is an affluent community near Los Angeles, California). By the time the series ended six years later, Smith had begun working in film, and today he has become one of the most successful actors in Hollywood, having demonstrated his dramatic and comedic range in such films as Ali, the life story of boxer Mohammed Ali; Men in Black; Hitch; Bad Boys; and his 2006 film, The Pursuit of Happyness, for which he earned an Oscar nomination and won numerous awards, including an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Image Award. The success of The Pursuit of Happyness was particularly sweet because it was a production of Smith's film and television production company, Overbrook Entertainment, which he began with a business partner and which has already produced a number of hit films, and because the movie featured his eight-year-old son, Jaden (pictured above with his father).
In April 2007, the weekly newsmagazine Newsweek declared the 38-year-old actor, musician, producer, husband, and father the "most powerful actor on the planet," in part due to his reported worldwide career box-office earnings of $4.4 billion. When interviewed for the Newsweek article, one studio head is reported to have said about Smith's popularity,"…There's Will Smith and then there are the mortals."
From the June 2007 edition of eJournal USA.
