Playboy Interview: Will Smith

a candid conversation with the star of "ali" about getting your ass kicked, losing your money and why some rap embarrasses him

Will Smith shows up for his Playboy Interview on the Columbia Pictures lot after working all morning on Men in Black 2, sharing the soundstage with partner Tommy Lee Jones and a cast of wormlike, chain-smoking, coffee-drinking aliens.

It's frivolous fare compared to Ali, which comes out this month. Ali tells the epic story of The Greatest, including the boxer's transformation from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, his decision to give up his championship belt during the prime years of his career by refusing to serve in Vietnam, and his redemption in knocking out George Foreman. It is an important role for Smith, one that might determine if he can move beyond the popcorn-picture genre and prove he is as good an actor as he says he is.

In person, Smith has a lot more in common with Muhammad Ali than MIB's Agent J. Like Ali ranting "I told you so" after the Sonny Liston and Foreman fights, Smith is not above boasting about the movie or himself But despite the influence of Michael Mann, who last pulled an Oscar-nominated performance out of Russell Crowe in The Insider, Ali holds no guarantees for success. From Raging Bull to The Hurricane, boxing bios rarely KO the box office, certainly not enough to justify Ali's budget of $105 million. It's just the kind of risk the real Ali once enjoyed, and Smith relishes being in a position unfamiliar to him: the underdog.

"Ninety percent of people you ask thought this was the worst career move I ever made," Smith says. "To quote Ali, they misjudged, they miscalculated, they got it all wrong. This is the rare film that has the potential for critical acclaim and for becoming a popcorn movie at the same time. It has the most incredible boxing footage ever committed to film. You will never see an actor making films on the level I am, allowing heavyweight boxers to punch him in the face as much as I did. This is the film of the decade. Period."

Even though he's become a globally bankable movie star with irrepressible charm, the 33-year-old rapper turned actor has long been proving himself to doubters. At the age of 18, he told his parents he was skipping college to become a rap star. The industry was fledgling, its proponents mostly rapping about hard lives in the ghetto, something Smith knew nothing about. He was raised in middle-class Philadelphia in surroundings furnished by a father who owned a refrigeration business and a mother who worked for the school board.

Smith was given a year to prove himself. In that time he and partner D.J. Jazzy Jeff won rap's first Grammy Award, for Parents Just Don't Understand, and became one of the first rap acts to reach platinum status. Other hits followed, and the duo teas touring the world and raking in the bucks, with Smith making a stylish impression in videos.

That would prove to be a saving grace for Smith, who promptly blew most of his cash on himself and his friends. He didn't spread enough of that money to the IRS, which provided a much-needed wake-up call. Luckily, the taxman wasn't the only one paging Smith. Quincy Jones and NBC thought his goofy charm might translate to television. Soon, Smith was the star of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a hit sitcom about a kid who leaves the Philadelphia hood and heads west to live with rich relatives.

The transition to Hollywood didn't take long. Smith showed potential in the movie version of Six Degrees of Separation, playing Paul, the confused but charming gay hustler who appeals to the liberal guilt of a bunch of art-loving New Yorkers and cons his way into their circle, claiming he is the son of Sidney Poitier.

The next big break came with Bad Boys, a high-testosterone buddy action comedy that was originally crafted for Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz but was reconfigured for Smith and fellow TV star Martin Lawrence. The film turned loose Smith's macho potential and led to a lead role in Independence Day. Playing jet pilot Captain Steven "Eagle" Hitler, Smith kicked alien tail with a gleeful flourish. The sci-fi spectacle grossed more than $900 million worldwide and Smith became a box-office king. He landed subsequent roles in such diverse films as Men in Black, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Enemy of the State and the much-panned Wild Wild West. He won a couple of MTV Awards, three Blockbuster Awards and a nod as Star of the Year from ShoWest, an award bestowed by theater owners. Smith then returned to rap by providing the catchy title song to Men in Black and releasing Big Willie Style, a multiplatinum seller that hatched the hit song Gettin' Jiggy With It. Smith was on a fast track even if his personal life suffered from it, evidenced by the end of his three-year marriage to Sheree Zampino in 1995. He rebounded from his divorce by falling in love with actress Jada Pinkett. They married in late 1997 and had a son the following summer and a daughter last year (Smith also has a son from his first marriage).

Playboy tapped Daily Variety columnist Michael Fleming (who previously interviewed Kevin Spacey and Robert Downey Jr. for the magazine) to catch up with Smith at this critical juncture in his career. Fleming reports:

"Smith arrived for the interview in light blue warm-ups, still in makeup from shooting scenes all morning. He's tall and rangy, with the easy gait and the broad shoulders of an athlete, obvious testament to the ring hardness gained from endless rounds of sparring to play Ali. Despite his busy schedule, Smith had no problem focusing on the task at hand. And, like Ali, he tends to make numerous boasts and pronouncements that somehow never leave you thinking, Wow, this guy's a jerk. Maybe that's because, like Ali, he carefully thinks about and believes what he says, and he can usually back up his bragging. Any expectation that Smith might have been tired or distracted after shooting a movie all morning dissipated immediately. 'I'm down with you, dog, till the wheels fall off,' he says as we are about to start. He means it."

[Q] Playboy: You once rapped a hit song called I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson. After trading blows in the ring with real fighters, do you think you could handle an accomplished boxer?

[A] Smith: You have to spend large portions of your life doing something to be great. No one can train for a year and compete with a professional in anything. But the average person on the street, I will beat the living dog crap out of.

[Q] Playboy: How did you train?

[A] Smith: My trainer is Darrell Foster--he trained with Sugar Ray Leonard. For the initial 14 months, his approach was not to teach me to fight like Ali. He taught me to fight, feeling that once I knew how to fight, as an actor, I'd learn how to fight like Ali. "The way we are going to do that," he said, "is that I'm going to put these gloves on, and I'm going to show you what it feels like to face a man on the other side of the ring who wants to bash your head in."

[Q] Playboy: So how does it feel to get your ass kicked?

[A] Smith: There's something cathartic about getting knocked down and standing back up, something really animalistic that puts you in touch with the center of who you are. It's the concept of fight or flight. You really discover who you are in that 30 seconds before the bell rings, and especially in that five seconds after the first time you get clipped.

[Q] Playboy: So the first time that you got knocked down, were you thinking about swinging back, or calling your agent to get you out of this?

[A] Smith: I didn't go down the first time I got clipped. I was hit by Michael Bentt, who plays Sonny Liston in the movie, and it was in the early days of training, just after Darrell told all the fighters to turn it up on me a notch. I kind of dipped when I should have dived, and I caught a right hand square in the center of my forehead. I felt an electric shock from the top of my spine down the back of both of my elbows. It was a straight right hand, and you really want to avoid right hands and left hooks. That was the first clean shot, and it woke me up. I had to decide how committed I was to becoming Muhammad Ali.

[Q] Playboy: Ali came to watch you in the ring. What was that like?

[A] Smith: When he came down the first time, he was really excited. It was great to watch his eyes, because even at his age, he is still amazed by himself. He is looking at me, but he is really looking at himself. He told me I got him so excited that he was going to make a comeback.

[Q] Playboy: You became a star by playing comic action heroes in popcorn movies. Now you're in a serious drama, playing one of the 20th century's most famous icons--while he's still alive. There are no flying saucers, no special effects. Why do it?

[A] Smith: I think his story is almost biblical. He is the patron saint of all colonized people, all people who suffer under cultural imperialism. He is the perfect depiction of being who you want to be, which is the universal theme that really attracted me. If his life didn't happen for real, you couldn't write it, because it would seem so phony. It's perfect. Everything he lived and the experiences he had are so rich and so close to the center of what human beings are, what poor people around the world experience emotionally and spiritually on a daily basis. I felt like there was nobody in the world who could do this but me.

[Q] Playboy: That's bold.

[A] Smith: There are roles you are born to play. Muhammad Ali just happened to be the guy I could relate to spiritually and emotionally, down to his attraction to women.

[Q] Playboy: The script is very open about Ali's affairs while he was married. Your image is of a happily married monogamous guy.

[A] Smith: I can relate to his appreciation of women. It's not as superficial as the common male attraction to women. The manifestation of the behavior is common, but I can relate to the depth of the attraction, because it is not sexual with him. You see him with six-year-old girls, you watch him with his daughters. He just loves female energy.

[Q] Playboy: Was Ali your hero, or more your father's hero?

[A] Smith: My father's. There were times in my father's life when he agreed with and loved Ali, and times when he hated him.

[Q] Playboy: You mean when Ali refused to fight in Vietnam?

[A] Smith: My father was in the Air Force, so they disagreed on that. People look at Ali and say, "Wow, he is the greatest. I really admire him." Think about what we are saying--I admire that he didn't go to Vietnam and kill strangers. We would like to think we could all stand up and say, "Wait a minute, exactly why are you sending my 17-year-old son to Vietnam?" That before we would pick up a gun and kill a stranger, we would have some comprehension of what we were doing. But instead we say he is a revolutionary.

[Q] Playboy: Ali took a stance and paid a high price: the prime of his career and his heavyweight championship belt.

[A] Smith: I can relate to the simplicity of that, which I think is at the center of the man. I enjoy having nice things. I will never know what I would have done in a similar situation. That is the bittersweet nature of doing this role. I love playing Ali, but I will never know if I am as great as I think I am.

[Q] Playboy: You first became famous because you had a gift for rhyming. How good were Ali's poems?

[A] Smith: My favorite is the one he does for the Ali--Frazier fight. I actually do it in the film. "Ali comes up and meets Frazier, but Frazier starts to retreat/and if Joe goes back any farther/he'll wind up in a ringside seat." I love that. His poems were perfect in the moment. He was a boxer, not a poet, but his poetry was so charged. And it was fun that someone could have such a cavalier attitude about fighting a killer.

[Q] Playboy: In his second Playboy Interview, Ali claimed he had been profoundly affected by traveling to Africa to fight. You went to Africa to re-create the George Foreman fight. How did it affect you?

[A] Smith: Oh, man. That was truly an experience of a lifetime. Jada and I purchased a house in South Africa, and we are going to live there for a year starting in December. The experience in Africa was amazing. I had dinner with Nelson Mandela. It's weird to talk about because I haven't intellectualized it all yet. I am still living off the emotion of the experience. Africa is the best and the worst of everything that exists on this planet, the most beautiful land you will ever see in your life. So many countries in Africa were colonized by so many different people; different worlds exist within an hour of one another. You hear someone speaking French--an hour away it's Portuguese. Then there are all the tribal languages.

[A] When I first landed in Africa, I was really pissed off that I was so ignorant and that children in America, when they say Africa, think of lions, tigers and giraffes. I got this State Department breakdown of Mozambique and Maputo, and it reads like going there is a death wish. In all my years in America I have never seen a picture of a beautiful African woman. Think about that. Have you ever seen a picture of a beautiful African woman?

[Q] Playboy: Most men can probably recall being moved at a young age by photos in National Geographic.

[A] Smith: Right, but that's a little different. We stepped off the plane in Africa, and there were a few hundred people in the airport. Some girls came running up, and I was like, Oh my God, why don't they show these in National Geographic? I met Miss Mozambique. She is 6'5" and, believe me, you have never seen a woman who looks like this. It felt like God's house was in Africa and he made sure everything around his house was beautiful. The images we see of Africa are from the bush. They show you the least educated, poorest people they can find to put on television. It is the same thing black people say about the news in the U.S. When something happens, the newspeople find the most ignorant black dude and put him on TV to explain it. That is exactly what happens with Africa. But let me tell you, Africa has the most beautiful women, the most beautiful landscape, the poshest hotels. I didn't even know there were cities! As dumb as that might sound, I was surprised to see that Johannesburg is like Manhattan. Clubs, restaurants. It made me angry that I didn't know. Poverty exists in Africa, the epidemic of AIDS exists, but they are isolated in the poorer areas, where the people are uneducated and don't have access to hospitals and adequate medicine. The richest and the poorest live in Africa.

[Q] Playboy: Is this something you'll do for just a year or will you keep a place in Africa from now on?

[A] Smith: I refuse to miseducate my children in the way that I was miseducated. My oldest son is eight, and when I talked to him about Africa, he asked, "Did you see any giraffes, Daddy?" We will go there for a year and I will put him in school and we will experience the continent.

[Q] Playboy: Back to Ali. Another reason that you seem right to play him is your confidence.

[A] Smith: And I am so pretty.

[Q] Playboy: Pretty, charming and confident, way back to when you started your acting career. Ali was that way from the beginning. Is all this a way to mask fear and insecurity?

[A] Smith: In his case, part of it was to convince himself. He mastered psychologicalwarfare. When you say you are the greatest enough times, you believe it and other people believe it. Then you have to prove it and live up to being the greatest. I think a large part of it was to fuel himself.

[Q] Playboy: What about you? You became the star of The Fresh Prince when you had never acted before.

[A] Smith: I never had any question that I was great.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you a little terrified?

[A] Smith: I had made videos and was no stranger to the camera, but the dialogue was brand new and it took me time to figure it out. Jada made a point the other night that really stuck with me. She said I was brilliantly naive, and I honestly believe that's exactly what I am. I think I could be the president of the U.S. if I really wanted to. Someone with a political background might say, "No, you can't--you didn't do this or that." But that person had better hope I don't decide that's what I want to do next. That attitude was never more obvious than on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I was so naive that I wasn't really nervous. The night before the first reading, I remember sitting in my house. I had DirecTV, with like 999 channels, and I'm flipping through and watching show after show, all these different people. It just dawned on me that, considering all the people I was seeing on TV, the law of averages would not allow me to be the worst. A betting man would wager I'd be somewhere in the middle. So at worst, right away I'm better than half of all the people on TV. Now, I'm not dumb. I've performedand been onstage, so that has to be worth a couple of percentage points. That puts me at the point of being better than 65 percent of all people on TV. I know I'm surrounded by a very good cast, and directors and producers who know what they're doing. That's worth another nine or 10 percent. I learned from my father that a huge part of success is a willingness to work, so I made it a point to learn every single word of dialogue in the script. While I waited my turn, I'd mouth everyone else's lines. It took about six episodes for somebody to notice and say something, because you tend to look at the person who's talking. But if you ever watch reruns of the show, you'll probably see me doing it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you really believe that confidence formula you'd worked out, even though you were a newcomer to acting?

[A] Smith: I always felt that if anybody could do it, I could, simply based on the fact that, within 10 or 15 percent differential for intellect or physicality, we are all similarly talented. What makes us different is who wants it more. The greatest strength I have is that I am a terminator. Period. Once I say I'm going to do something, there are two options. I am going to do it, or I am going to be dead. I made up a saying, and when I said it to my wife, she didn't like it. But I am going to let the world decide: Success is baked by a chef named obsession. That is how I feel. I am one of the most obsessive people you will ever meet. I absolutely will not lose at anything. If you beat me, rest assured the best person in the world will be on a plane tomorrow to teach me how to do it better.

[Q] Playboy: Seriously?

[A] Smith: My father taught me how to play chess when I was seven, and rarely do I run into somebody who beats me. On Enemy of the State, this old dude beat me bad. The next day I found a chess master to train me for the next three months so I could beat that dude before the movie was over.

[Q] Playboy: And you beat him?

[A] Smith: Absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get your work ethic from your father?

[A] Smith: Yes. He owned a refrigeration business, you know those long freezer cases you see in supermarkets? We installed those, and we had an ice company, manufacturing those big bags of ice. As soon as I could drive, say from age 15 to 18, I practically ran the business myself. There is one thing that I remember most about my father. I might have been about 13, and we went into the basement of a supermarket where he had to fix a compressor. A supermarket basement is just about the nastiest place in the world, maybe four times worse than a dirty movie theater floor, for comparison's sake. We go down there, our feet sticking to the floor, and I see this rat lying right where we need to be. This thing had eaten d-Con, which essentially burns its insides out and kills it. From the front it looked OK, but the rat's stomach and back legs were burned away. With his bare hand, my father tried to move it but it was stuck. So he yanked on it, tore it loose and flipped it out of the way. Then he put his head down on the floor where the rat was, to do his work. Let me tell you, I never complained, from that day forward, about doing what I had to do to feed my family.

[Q] Playboy: Despite your star power and the prestigious movies director Michael Mann has made, Ali almost fell apart, and only was made when you and he took responsibility for the budget. Studios feared that a historical film about a black man wouldn't draw audiences in some foreign territories. How did you feel about that?

[A] Smith: A hundred million dollars is a lot of money. In the past, these types of films have been difficult for studios. Michael Mann and I put our fees in to augment the budget and show our commitment to the project. We also showed our commitment in other ways. We all decided early on that while getting injured would be difficult for production, if we didn't deliver real boxing, it would be on film for the rest of our lives, and our kids and grandkids and Muhammad Ali would see it. We decided there would be no movie fighting. In this movie, we are fighting, punching, everybody is getting hit. We started with the headgear so everybody could get used to what it feels like.

[A] I injured my thumb in the first six months of training. The doctor said I broke it, and that hyped me up. It felt like commitment to me. I liked that I was punching people and my thumb was hurting. This film was the most difficult thing I have ever done, to the point that I had to stop in the middle of the day and pray, Please give me strength to not tear somebody's head off here. Let me stay focused and committed to what I'm doing. There were a lot of days I wanted to get on a plane and go home.

[Q] Playboy: Boxing aside, this is your most challenging role since Six Degrees of Separation. Are there actors whose career paths you've tried to follow?

[A] Smith: There are a few people I've watched. My goal is to be the most diverse actor in the history of Hollywood. When I look back, I don't want there to be one person who has a more colorful spectrum of films.

[Q] Playboy: Who comes closest to where you want to be?

[A] Smith: Cary Grant was rounded enough emotionally to be in any kind of film, and that's the kind of career I am searching for. Right now Tom Hanks is the man, and there's Julia Roberts, Denzel, Tom Cruise. The bottom line is the ability to perform in the role and take people where you want them to go.

[Q] Playboy: Compare yourself with guys like Cruise, Hanks and Mel Gibson. Is there a quality you have that these guys don't?

[A] Smith: Of the guys who are really funny, most of them probably wouldn't have fit in Bad Boys. Most of the really brilliant dramatic actors wouldn't have fit in Men in Black 2. What I'm working toward is diversity. Tom Hanks' career, plus action movies, is what I'm shooting for. I don't view myself as going against white actors. I want to do a role that that person wanted to get. I want to be the standard. I want Tom Cruise to take movies that I turn down. I want you to have to ask Tom Cruise, "So what does it feel like to have to wait until Will turns it down?" That is what I want one day. I want you to have to ask Tom Hanks, "If Will turns down the next whatever, will you take it?"

[Q] Playboy: Do you have leading-man looks? You have described your face as a car with the doors open, because of your prominent ears.

[A] Smith: I'm comfortable with the way I look. I do have prominent ears, but women love them, they like the way they stick out. I did have to pin them back to play Ali.

[Q] Playboy: How, as a director, does Michael Mann broach the subject that his star's ears don't work for the role?

[A] Smith: Michael Mann doesn't pull punches on anything, ever. He just says, they have to go. They made this prosthetic mold and put it on the backs of my ears. It took an hour and a half each day, but it made my ears less noticeable.

[Q] Playboy: What part of your acting repertoire haven't we seen yet?

[A] Smith: Romance. There is a little romance in Ali. I haven't been in a real romantic scene yet.

[Q] Playboy: You had a passionate scene with Anthony Michael Hall in Six Degrees--

[A] Smith:[Laughs hard] That is the only love scene I have ever had. I'd like to show I can do more than that!

[Q] Playboy: How did you go from playing the Fresh Prince to a gay con artist?

[A] Smith:Six Degrees was the hardest I ever had to work to get something. John Guare authored the play and the adaptation. He had worked onstage with three or four actors he loved. He wasn't enjoying the concept of bringing someone in and teaching him, all over again, who Paul was. He kept saying, "I don't want to meet him, I don't need to, I have my cast." But finally, after six months, he came to the set of Fresh Prince. He walked into my dressing room, saw I had a picture of Run DMC next to one of Mao, and he said, "Oh my God, you're him, you're Paul!" I never read a piece of dialogue. He said, "You get it!" He hugged me, said he was so excited because he never thought there was a chance it would work. I'm sitting there thinking, Man, I'm brilliant.

[Q] Playboy: That proved the easy part. What was the hardest thing about that movie?

[A] Smith: It was the fact I had never taken myself psychologically to that place before. I hadn't really mastered the craft. I would go 48 hours as Paul--I wouldn't come out of character. You do that a few times in a 10-day stretch, your lines of reality begin to blur. I'd speak like Paul and not realize it and people would say, "Why are you still talking that way?"

[Q] Playboy: Despite that, you didn't want to do the gay kissing scene. If you were faced with that situation now, would you do things differently?

[A] Smith:Six Degrees was the film that proved I was an actor. If I took that role now, that scene would prove my commitment to the part. But back then, people didn't look at me as an actor. I was a rapper who was acting, and I felt I had things to protect. Now I protect my integrity as an actor, but back then I thought, How can I make a rap album after they've seen me kissing this white dude? What annoyed them was that I didn't make it known before I took the film, and if I felt this way, I shouldn't have done the movie. I agree with that. But I also have to say that's the best performance I had given in a movie--until Ali. Ali blows everything else I've done right out of the water.

[Q] Playboy: You first asked Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed you in both Men in Black movies and in Wild Wild West, to do Ali. Then Wild Wild West came out and was a flop. Ali languished until Michael Mann stepped in. Did you and Barry need a break after Wild Wild West proved to be a disappointment?

[A] Smith: No. There were script issues, and at that point I didn't want to make Ali. I was petrified by the concept of playing Ali. I knew how much it would cost and I didn't know if it would ever come together. Barry took another movie, and during that time I met Michael Mann. He said, "If you were going to do Ali, here is what I think you should do." It was the first time I was inspired by the potential. Ali is a half-court hook shot at the buzzer and Michael Mann hit all net. When those shots go in, people go berserk, scream at the top of their lungs. It is the film of the decade. Period. The excitement and action of Heat, the depth and interpersonal relationships of The Insider, the epic quality of The Last of the Mohicans. Michael Mann's mind and soul and heart were working on all cylinders on Ali, and I was his tool.

[Q] Playboy: A couple of questions about Wild Wild West.

[A] Smith: Everybody has at least one, man.

[Q] Playboy:Wild Wild West was an expensive disappointment. When did you realize you were in trouble?

[A] Smith: Probably at the press junket, after the reporters had seen the film. I have a fairly good relationship with the media, so a lot of guys who rip other people kind of take it easy on me. You always know by the first question. After Ali, people will ask, What was it like portraying a man that great? On Wild Wild West, the first question was, So, are you working on Men in Black 2?

[Q] Playboy: The measure of a fighter is what he does the moment he's knocked down the first time. How did you handle your first big movie failure?

[A] Smith: The thing that made it really bitter was I knew the movie wasn't good. Six Degrees of Separation didn't make any money either, but it was a great film. Wild Wild West ended up making money, but I knew the movie was bad, and that's what hurts me. My fans and I have an unspoken understanding that I don't put out no dookie. I don't make wack movies, and people come out in droves the first weekend and make me look like a big star. Wild Wild West had a $52 million opening weekend, number one movie, and it killed me because I knew it was wack. I felt like I had cheated my fans.

[Q] Playboy: When you moved from being a rapper to starring in a good-natured sitcom like Fresh Prince, did you worry about being perceived as a sellout?

[A] Smith: Not really. I got broken in really early in the world of rap. There were always people who said my music was soft, that it wasn't real rap. My skin was toughened enough to laugh at that type of aspersion. And Fresh Prince reflects pretty much the core of my personality. The level of goofiness I exude in that show matches the level I exude daily with my kids and my family. I am very silly, and that show is an accurate depiction of how it is 80 percent of the time you spend with Will Smith. I'm 33, and I was 21 or 22 then. I've matured, but there's not that big a difference.

[Q] Playboy: Do you let your son listen to rappers whose songs degrade women or celebrate violence?

[A] Smith: I listened to Eddie Murphy's comedy albums when I was growing up. I think the dynamic that needs to exist is that parents tell kids they are not allowed to listen to something, and then the kids sneak and listen to it. You create the moral groundwork for your children, knowing that they have to stray, that they have to live as who they are. You never say this to your kids, but that's the approach I'm taking. So I tell my son he's not allowed to listen, but in the back of my mind I am hoping he does.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of the hard-edged rap being made now? Could you see yourself doing that kind of music?

[A] Smith: I have to live as who I am. I create the music that's in my heart. I talk about the things I feel, and I am in a position that a lot of guys aren't in. I don't have to rap for money. I make what I want the way I want to make it. It's hard for me to outwardly condemn people for trying to feed their families.

[Q] Playboy: Are you concerned with some of the messages in these songs?

[A] Smith: The bottom line is that a lot of people who have been blessed with this forum aren't really smart. I have educated myself beyond a lot of my peers in the rap world, and, more than anything, here's my beef: I understand what you are saying and what you feel, but the world is bigger than what you are rapping about. Just rap about more topics in your world. You mean to tell me, all day long, all you do is smoke blunts, have sex and kill people? You never do anything else? You have never one time in your life really liked somebody, never been soft and acted spun-out over some girl? You never sat outside some girl's house hoping she isn't with somebody when she comes home? Let me hear that story.

[Q] Playboy: You're saying that too much rap is one-sided?

[A] Smith: Absolutely. We were in a village in Mozambique. Jay-Z and Tupac were scribbled on the walls of a shack with no running water and no electricity. Rap music is black America's contribution to the world, and that is who people around the world think black Americans are. They represent me. I have less of a problem with Eminem. He is really creative but so far over the top that it's clearly a farce. Eminem isn't trying to make people believe that's really how he lives his life every day. Eminem is silly, having a good time, and he doesn't affect my community.

[Q] Playboy: Whose work do you most admire?

[A] Smith: There are a lot of guys underground who have skills, but Jay-Z is the most talented mainstream hip-hop lyricist. I just think there are more topics he could explore. He is smart, so I know he will.

[Q] Playboy:Independence Day was a gigantic hit, but with the exception of Star Wars starring Harrison Ford, these films almost never make superstars of their actors. Did you know you would become a big star because of that film?

[A] Smith: Not at all. I knew it would be fun, just reading the script. After the movie's Super Bowl commercial in which the White House blew up and it said, "Enjoy the Super Bowl, it might be your last," I knew it would be big.

[Q] Playboy: You were paid a bit more than $1 million for a movie that made $900 million. Did you feel cheated?

[A] Smith: The benefit for me is that I had already come through the music business, so I knew that it all balances out. You make a smaller fee for Independence Day, one that isn't comparable to your contribution, but you make way too much money for Bagger Vance. Eddie Murphy told me, "It's a marathon, man, it's not a sprint. Settle down."

[Q] Playboy: In The Legend of Bagger Vance, some were surprised that you would play second banana to Matt Damon, and there was criticism that your character was subservient.

[A] Smith: I loved what Bagger Vance turned out to be, simple concepts that are similar to the concepts I believe about life. I love the analogy to golf. I play golf a lot. The Hindu principles of life are not unlike how I approach situations. The bottom line is, once you get started after you hit that first ball, no matter where it goes, you have to hit it again.

[Q] Playboy: Compared with being punched repeatedly in a boxing ring, was one appeal of Bagger Vance the chance to play golf all day?

[A] Smith: Oh God, yes. I made entirely too much money for Bagger Vance. I would have paid to do Bagger Vance. My manager is going to hate it if you print this, but I have never had that much fun making a movie, ever.

[Q] Playboy: You were raised by strict parents in Philadelphia who had dreams that you'd graduate from college. How tough was it, at the age of 18, to tell them you weren't going?

[A] Smith: It was toughest for my mom. She'd spent that year setting everything up. My high school years were really tough on my mom, because I was a chronic B student who did absolutely nothing. I don't think I did one night of homework as a senior, and I still got Bs and graduated. I worked out a formula after being told that my homework would be 10 percent of the grade. I decided I'd get As on all my tests, but I didn't feel like doing homework. If I got As everywhere else, I would get a 90. If I got Bs, that's an 80, and still a B. My mother hated that I would let my mind go to all that trouble to figure out how to get a B.

[Q] Playboy: Did she let up after giving you a year and watching you succeed?

[A] Smith: We made it big, won the first Grammy ever for rap. My parents said they wanted me to go back to school after a year, but by then we had gone to London, recorded an album and signed a record deal. My mother still tells me, "You going back, baby." Then she says, "Oh listen, I just love that new-model Mercedes."

[Q] Playboy: Does it bother you that you don't have a college degree?

[A] Smith: Yes. I wouldn't change anything about my life, because if you change one thing you change everything. But I just hate that there is a scholar in me and it almost feels like I'm wasting a part of myself. I know that making movies and music and entertainment is just a pit stop on the way to my true greatness. I want to be so much beyond what I am doing.

[Q] Playboy: What is that?

[A] Smith: I want the world to be better because I was here. In the past year, I have been with probably the two best-known figures in the world, Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela. Just being around those guys made me feel like, God, I suck. I am nothing. I mean absolutely nothing, and the bad part is that I have the power and the potential to be everything. I can make some big changes with the number of people who know me around the world, who respect how I (continued on page 171)Will Smith(continued from page 72) have chosen to live my life. Instead, I am just caught up in the drug that is the world of moviemaking.

[Q] Playboy: When you won your Grammy, you made a lot of money, blew most of it and got into trouble with the IRS. What was the craziest thing you did with money?

[A] Smith: I had six vehicles, and a garage that held one. Cars and trucks and motorcycles were parked everyplace. Then it got to the point where I was so broke I had to ride my motorcycle because I couldn't buy gas. It was that bad.

[Q] Playboy: Were your parents all over you for that?

[A] Smith: Not really, because by that point, I had already been successful. My father always said, "If all this stuff goes south, you can still come back to the icehouse."

[Q] Playboy: Did you change your ways, or did the TV series just give you more money to spend?

[A] Smith: Having money and going broke is different from being broke. Being broke is light years better than going broke. When you are already broke, there is always the feeling that everything would be great if you had money. Going broke, you have to deal with the notion that you had all of that, and this is what you did with it. It makes you evaluate who you are and what you have done and the choices you've made in your life. But adversity inspires me. There is a sick part of me that likes to react to adversity.

[Q] Playboy: A lot of the Ali film is about his spiritual journey, his decision to become a Muslim. You grew up Catholic and once said you thought the nuns and priests in Catholic schools were a bit racist, and that organized religion was a little cloudy to you. Are you a religious man now?

[A] Smith: I don't have a relationship with God through other people. My relationship with God is between me and God. I went to a Catholic school and one of the nuns called me a nigger. I couldn't believe it. I was like, Wow, how did God put her in charge?

[Q] Playboy: How did you deal with such an insult from an authority figure when you were that young?

[A] Smith: At that point in my life, I had been called nigger enough times that the word didn't hurt. It was just the shock that it came from a nun. Ouch. My grandmother and my mother were Baptists, so I had another experience with God that was separate from my experience at school. My grandmother really was my conduit to God. I measured the beauty and strength of God through my grandmother. Because that nun wasn't my central contact with God, it wasn't devastating, but it was harsh. She's wearing the old habit and all, and I'm like, C'mon, at least be in plain clothes when you say something like that. That was brutal.

[Q] Playboy: If your son tells you at 18 that he's bypassing college to go into rap, what will you say?

[A] Smith: All you can offer your children is knowledge, discipline and love, and that is all I'm going to try to do. I don't feel I own my children. They are their own people, the way that I am my own person. It is actually worse to never take a gamble that you feel positive about than losing everything on the gamble. Taking your shot and missing is a much better life than never taking your shot.

[Q] Playboy: You got married early, had a son, then got divorced. What was hardest about that?

[A] Smith: To me, divorce is losing, and I don't lose. That is how I approach any situation. I am not going to lose. Not only am I going to win, I am going to win bigger than anyone has ever won. If you have been successful, apply that same concept to everything you want to be successful in. The divorce was tough because I was just about to discover that. I got married right when I started Six Degrees, and that was the most lost I have ever felt in a role, so she didn't really know who she married. It was a really tough time in my career, and my marriage was the casualty of my achieving that higher level of expertise in my craft.

[Q] Playboy: Then you fell in love with and married Jada Pinkett. What are you doing differently now?

[A] Smith: The most important thing is to be on the same page with the other person. Jada and I are 85 percent on the same page, so the time we spend together is working on that other 15 percent. There are a lot of people who start at 40 percent. Jada and I rarely argue.

[Q] Playboy: Movie star couples have been falling by the wayside recently, whether it's Tom and Nicole, Alec and Kim or Jennifer and Puffy. Is it harder being with a star who has a high level of insecurity and needing approval?

[A] Smith: The difficulty is sifting through your life to a central concept, where everything starts from. Jada and I have agreed on this basic concept: You don't say anything that is not the truth, period. Nothing comes out of your mouth that is candy-coated or aimed to protect the other person.

[Q] Playboy: For many, that would seem a shortcut to divorce.

[A] Smith: We both believe you cannot be successful otherwise, so we agreed on that basic concept. If I ask you a question, I want to know the truth, uncut, unadulterated. If we both accept that, then we can accelerate our conversation and the movement of the relationship. Other people might get caught up in the question, "Honey, how does this dress look?" Don't make it complicated. Tell the truth.

[Q] Playboy: That's probably easier to answer if your wife looks like Jada Pinkett.

[A] Smith: No. Even on her, sometimes the dress looks wack. I don't say anything to my friends that I wouldn't say to my wife. If I look at a woman, I might say, "Man, she has a big ass." I say that to my friends and I say it to my wife, just like that. That is who I am. If a person doesn't want to be around you, let him or her make a decision not to be around you based on who you are.

[Q] Playboy: Did the two of you sign a prenuptial agreement?

[A] Smith: No. I don't even like the concept of a prenup. The idea is that this is going to work out and we're going to be together forever. I am the type of guy who doesn't have a plan B because plan B distracts from plan A. I also feel that if plan A is good enough, then the place you fall when you miss on plan A is great.

[Q] Playboy: You once sent a truckload of flowers to Jada. What was your most overt romantic move to woo a woman?

[A] Smith: I got her pregnant. Nah, I like to do stuff. On Jada's 28th birthday, I had a Latin quartet wake her up, playing outside of the bedroom at six o' clock in the morning. She had to be at work at seven, so I took care of the wake-up call. This Latin band serenaded her with Mi Amor in the front of the house, then I escorted her to her birthday present.

[Q] Playboy: What was her birthday present?

[A] Smith: A Ferrari 456.

[Q] Playboy: Now that's romantic.

[A] Smith: Well, you know, I am the romantic type. You start with the romance and then you bang them with the heat.

Back then I thought, How can I make a rap album after they've seen me kissing this white dude?