Will Smith

Will Smith: Snapshot

Will Smith: Five Fun Facts

1. A millionaire by age 20, Will Smith admits to spending lavishly on jewelry, a house and luxury cars early in his career. He and his buddies once convinced the salespeople at Gucci to close the store so they could enjoy a private shopping spree. "Being able to buy anything you want makes you a little crazy," Smith later told PEOPLE.
2. Known for his boundless confidence, Will Smith was worried about making the leap from rapper to actor. When called in to audition for The Cosby Show and A Different World, Smith was a no-show. "I realized later how scared I was to take that step," he told PEOPLE.
3. Will Smith paid for each of his Fresh Prince of Bel-Air costars to upgrade their onset dressing rooms in 1995. "Mine was called Daphne's little bordello," Daphne Maxwell Reid, who played Smith's Aunt Viv, told PEOPLE. "It had a gold brocade chair with cupids on it."
4. In 2002, a fan asked Will Smith for an autograph in Australia during a shopping trip with his three-year-old son Jaden. "I sign, and she walks away," he told PEOPLE. "My son stops and looks at me and says, 'Who are you, Daddy?' I really needed this now – for my ego."
5. For one of Jada Pinkett Smith's birthdays, Will Smith created a DVD message telling his wife there were clothes upstairs and a car would pick her up in 20 minutes. She was taken to the airport and flown to San Francisco, where Will was waiting for her at a restaurant she'd been reading about. He told PEOPLE, "That's how Big Will does it!"

Will Smith: Biography

1987

June

Most Likely to Succeed

Three weeks before he's scheduled to graduate from Philadelphia's Overbrook High, Smith and childhood pal "Jazzy Jeff" Townes release their debut hip-hop album Rock The House. With a burgeoning music career, Smith, known by his stage name, "The Fresh Prince," defers a scholarship to MIT to pursue his passion. It pays off. The clean-cut duo's second album, He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper, makes it to No. 4 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart and earns them
a Best Rap Performance Grammy for the jokey single
"Parents Just Don't Understand."

1990

September 10

Yo Holmes, to Bel-Air

Smith is cast as "Will Smith" in the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, about a street-smart Philly kid who moves in with wealthy relatives in L.A. "Will has this very infectious personality, with a great spirit," NBC entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff tells PEOPLE. "Whatever he has, you can't teach. I think the Eddie Murphy comparison is there." The show lasts until 1996 and continues to live on in syndication.

1992

November

Daddy Loves You

Six months after marrying fashion design student Sheree Zampino, (they met in 1991)the couple has their first child. Named Willard C. Smith III, their son goes by the nickname "Trey." Smith and Zampino, however, separate in 1995. Smith dedicates his 1998 single "Just the Two of Us," to Trey – who stars alongside his dad in the video – telling him, "It didn't work out with me and your mom/But yo, push come to shove/You was conceived in love."

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