Willard Christopher Smith II, initially born and raised in the Wynnefield area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an American actor and musician. He’s the second of four brothers, with the last two twins named Harry and Ellen, from Willard Smith Sr. and Caroline, the married couple who operated the refrigerator shop. Smith had shown himself to be a clever and friendly boy during his youth, which won him the nickname Prince from several of his peers at Overbrook High School.
Smith was profoundly inspired at the age of 12 by Eddie Murphy and emerging hip-hop idols such as Grandmaster Flash, who motivated him to start rapping and play in his own specialized comedic style quickly. He encountered Jeff Townes, a resident of Pennsylvania, at a party in Philadelphia at his 16-year age where he successfully made everybody join the party with his joke chuckled at. Both of them, Jeff as DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will as rapper Fresh Prince, got close and started to play together. They sang the funny, radio-friendly songs together in 1989, one of the most successful was “Parents Just Don’t Understand” which resulted in success and promising bright future career for both friends, causing Smith to turn down his scholarship to the super-prestigious MIT of Boston to pursue his dream. As this song won Smith and Jeff the first ever Grammy award for “Best Rap Performance” in 1989, this sacrifice was somehow worthwhile.
Smith had become sick with wasting his days on money and fame and wanted to try something different and challenging. In 1989, when he encountered Benny Medina, who had an idea to create a sitcom focused on his life in Beverly Hills, the solution came to him. The clever concept culminated in the six-year series of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” broadcast by NBC in 1990, and which story was easy with Smith essentially playing himself; transplanted to Beverly Hills by a street-smart West Philly boy.
Since then, Smith continued to pursue his acting abilities to play in several films before the film critics remembered his success in a 1993 film focused on the play “Six Degrees of Separation,” by John Guare, which discusses the idea that a chain of just six friends binds everybody in the universe with each other. After that, he appeared in his next hit movie, Bad Boys, released in 1995, and his 2003 sequel, Bad Boys 2, which was very famous. Thanks to both films for which Smith’s career was sky rocketed and that in the Blockbuster “Independence Day” (1996) where he portrayed the alien-battling captain of the Marine Corps, Steven Hiller, he was able to get his big part.
“Men in Black”Men in Black,”Men in Black II”Men in Black II. “Leading roles in films such as “Enemy of the State” (1998), “Wild Wild West” (1999), “Ali” (2001), which gained him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor category for his depiction of boxer Muhammad Ali, and then followed “I, Robot” (2004).
Here are some awards Smith has earned either for his qualified action abilities, strong vocal, or even for the physical charisma God has provided him; selected by People Magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People (1998), won a Grammy award during his rap career for the “Summertime” album, and placed # 2 on the Top Ten Box Office stars of Star TV in the 1990s (2003). In addition, he was also eligible for the Academy Award, making him the first hip hop artist to be nominated.