Will Smith: Iron Will

"There are members of the press who make their living infringing on people's private moments," he replies. "You never know where these people are going to be. They stay outside your house and climb the gates and walk around looking in your windows. Now I've got a bunch of 140-pound Rottweilers. It's just a shame to have to live like that, because I like people so much. Still, you don't know what people will do. You can never feel completely safe. You've got to look around all the time. I'm kind of used to that, being black, watching out for white people coming to get you. Now it's tenfold."

What are the things he most misses doing now that anonymity is a memory?

"I'm having trouble dealing with the concept that you sacrifice your right to courtesy by being a celebrity," he comments. "Because I'm a celebrity, someone is allowed to block my way from getting into my car. If I'm in the middle of a conversation, because I'm a celebrity, someone can come up to me and go. 'Can you sign this?' You're supposed to do the nice thing and sign, because if you don't, it's like, 'He's such an asshole. He doesn't sign autographs.' You're in mid-gulp at a restaurant and people ask you to put down your fork, take some dirty pen that you have no idea of where it's been, sign some filthy piece of paper ripped off a paper bag they found outside, then go back and put your hands in your food."

Still, the tabloids have had next to nothing in the way of juicy revelations about Smith's past love life. How has this former high-rolling rapper and TV star avoided it? Hasn't he ever done a Charlie Sheen?

"There's probably only four women in Los Angeles that have intimate knowledge of Will Smith," he says. "You know, I had my brief period, a short time in my life, but that got real old real quick. I want to love somebody. I just always prefer one woman. The intimacy is so much more enjoyable when it's with someone you love. Because I know I can pretty much have sex with anyone I choose, it becomes less appealing. It's no challenge. A successful relationship is much harder than sleeping with as many women as you can sleep with."

Commitment is a rare attitude, particularly in Hollywood. When I ask him how he came by it, he relates a childhood incident that shaped his response to women in general--and, very possibly, Jada Pinkett in particular. "I was nine and my older sister must have been 15. Some guys pulled a knife on me and took my money when I was coming home from school. I came in crying and my sister asked me why. I told her and she right away grabbed a baseball bat. We walked around for four hours looking for this guy. She had no concern for her own safety. Somebody had done something to her brother and she was going to do everything in her power to make sure they never did it again. We never found the guys, but that type of love and commitment is what I search for. My mother and my grandmother? That same kind of unconditional love. All women have the organs. But that's not what excites me about being in a relationship with women, that's not what makes me feel good. What I want to know is, 'Are you gonna grab a bat when someone steals my money?' Now, Miss Jada's so little, she might need two bats, but she's more than happy to go grab 'em. Outside of our love relationship, she's my best friend, too."

Smith speaks equally lovingly or his son. Although raising a child as a single parent with a booming career is, he admits, "hard sometimes, that's what life is. We have a great relationship. He has a lot of the spirit I was born with, which is, 'Hey, look, I'm happy to be alive.' And he loves Miss Jada. There's three things you can give your children 100 percent of: love, discipline and knowledge. That's what I concentrate on, and, from that point, he's going to have to take it on his own."

Despite soul-shaking changes in his professional and personal life, Smith is confident that his head, and ego, are in good shape. "The reason I've got a really good grasp on this is because I went through music first, where the ups and downs are more drastic," he says. "In film and TV, there's a natural, gradual decline to your career. In the music business, it's literally one day. The day your record hits the radio, you explode to number one on the countdown. You're the man, you're large, you're doing show after show. Then you're over just that fast. I had the ups of people telling me, 'You're the man, Will.' then the downs of selling your house because you can't afford all this stuff you bought because everybody told you were the man. The money disappeared. But, my God, I learned about myself because I had the ups and all the downs."

Pages: 1 2 3