BIOGRAPHY Cont..
                           Will Smith looks, well, wrong -- and he knows it.
                                  Greeting a visitor at his trailer on the Culver
                                  City, Calif., set of his next film, a sci-fi action
                          comedy called Men in Black, the rapper turned actor
                          shifts his lanky 6'2" frame self-consciously beneath his
                          movie wardrobe--a tie, a white shirt and a boxy, dark
                          wool suit that would do an undertaker proud. "Oh, man!
                          This outfit is just not me," says Smith, 27, who in his six
                          years as the star of the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of
                          Bel-Air helped make backward baseball caps,
                          sports-team jerseys and baggy jeans the national uniform
                          of Cool. "The last time I wore a suit and tie," he says with
                          a laugh, "was my eighth-grade graduation from Our Lady
                          of Lourdes!"
                          He scans his attire, desperate to find a vestige of hipness.
                          Then his face brightens. "Look!" he shouts, waving his
                          sock-clad right foot in the air. "I'm wearing only one shoe!
                          I've still got an edge!" A short while later there's a knock
                          on the trailer door, and a woman from the wardrobe
                          department steps in. "Here's your other shoe!" she says
                          cheerfully. Smith takes the gleaming footwear--freshly
                          cleaned of paint splatter, it turns out--and sets it on a
                          table, grinning.
                          The shoe fits. And even if it does pinch his sense of style,
                          Smith will wear it gladly. Loosely laced high-tops, shiny
                          black wing tips or the combat boots he wears as
                          alien-battling Marine Corps Capt. Steven Hiller in the
                          blockbuster movie Independence Day--these are all glass
                          slippers in the Cinderella story of Smith's life. The
                          successful jump from hip hop to sitcoms was, for Smith,
                          only the beginning. In 1993's Six Degrees of Separation
                          he surprised critics with his gift for drama, and last year
                          Smith displayed a talent even dearer to Hollywood
                          moguls' hearts, or what passes for them: He more than
                          held his own with Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys, an
                          action-comedy that made $140 million worldwide.
                          Now there's Independence Day. With its intricate,
                          hyperkinetic special effects, ensemble cast and sheer box
                          office power--it earned a record $96 million in its first six
                          days in release--the film might overwhelm a lesser actor.
                          Instead, Smith's hooting, cigar-chomping turn as a fighter
                          pilot, roaring off to "kick E.T.'s ass," is for many
                          moviegoers the film's most engaging performance.
                          "Audiences identify with him--I'd see it in their eyes at test
                          screen-ings," says Day director Roland Emmerich. "He's
                          going to be huge."
                          Smith's ascendant star is but one of many major personal
                          changes he has recently gone through. The pressures of
                          work, he says, contributed to the painful breakup last year
                          of his three-year marriage to Sheree Zampino, 28. Smith
                          has also had the joyful--albeit sobering--experience of
                          becoming a father; he and Zampino share custody of
                          3-year-old Will Smith III. "Being a dad changes
                          everything," he says.
                          In his case, he says, it has made him more settled and
                          responsible--and helped him find love again. A few
                          months back he discovered his long-sought soulmate in
                          actress Jada Pinkett, 24, a former star of TV's A
                          Different World, who currently appears opposite Eddie
                          Murphy in The Nutty Professor. Smith says it was his
                          newfound maturity that helped persuade him to quit his still
                          successful TV series this year. "My everyday life is now
                          drastically different from that of the Fresh Prince," he says.
                          "It's become increasingly difficult to find that guy inside
                          me."
                          Maybe so, but outwardly the Smith who "cracked people
                          up," in costar Jeff Goldblum's words, staging mock ninja
                          fights on the set of Independence Day, sounds a lot like
                          the Smith who found fun even in punishment as a kid
                          growing up in middle-class West Philadelphia, Pa. The
                          second of four children of Willard Smith Sr., the owner of
                          a refrigeration firm, and Caroline, a school-board
                          administrator, "Will was punished first because he's older,"
                          recalls his brother Harry, 25, an accountant who now
                          handles Smith's finances. "Then he'd go around a corner
                          and make faces so we'd laugh--and we'd get punished
                          worse."
                          Even at Overbrook High School, Smith says, "I'd cut up
                          the class but still take in what the teacher was saying."
                          Amused by his smooth excuses for missing assignments,
                          some teachers called him Prince Charming. One,
                          however, complained to Smith's mother that, she recalls,
                          Will "was testing at a college level but just barely passing."
                          Prodded by Mom, Smith buckled down and was
                          accepted by the Milwaukee School of Engineering in
                          1986. But by that time he had other plans.
                          The then-new musical form of hip hop consumed him. In
                          1985, at age 16, Smith met Jeff Townes, 20 at the time,
                          who was playing deejay at a friend's party. The two
                          bonded and honed a stage act at parties and church
                          functions. Soon they were performing at clubs as DJ Jazzy
                          Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Townes, who had recorded an
                          earlier solo album, found a label interested in the duo. In
                          1986 they cut Rock the House, which sold 600,000
                          copies. Two of their next three CDs went platinum, and
                          the 1988 single "Parents Just Don't Understand" won a
                          Grammy for Best Rap Performance, the first ever given in
                          that category. These were heady days for Smith, who
                          toured in London, Moscow and Japan and earned more
                          than $1 million by age 20. Still, Smith's sister Ellen,
                          Harry's twin, says her brother always called home to
                          check in and say he was okay.
                          But his bank account was heading toward not okay. In
                          interviews, Smith has recalled how he spent lavishly on
                          jewelry, a house outside Philadelphia and six luxury cars.
                          One day, while in Atlanta, he and a group of friends
                          convinced a Gucci store to close its doors so they could
                          enjoy a private shopping spree. "Money disappears a lot
                          faster than it comes in, no matter how much you make,"
                          Smith says now. "Being able to buy anything you want
                          makes you a little crazy."
                          Still, a saner part of Smith's mind was ever planning
                          ahead. "He's never been the type to stay in one place,"
                          says Townes, now a music producer in Philadelphia. Even
                          before they had released their first album, Smith said he
                          "wanted to be in movies."
                          In late 1989, Smith met Benny Medina, then a Warner
                          Music exec and now Smith's manager. Born in Watts,
                          Calif., and taken in as a teenager by a family in Beverly
                          Hills, Medina wanted to do a TV show based on his life.
                          Smith loved the idea, and Medina lured in Quincy Jones
                          as executive producer. In early 1990, Jones invited NBC
                          execs to his home to watch Smith audition. "There were
                          no beads of sweat," recalls Warren Littlefield, NBC's
                          entertainment president. "Will read from a script and
                          nailed it. Isat there thinking, `Whoa! Just bottle this guy!' "
                          Smith demurs. Looking back, he says he was a long way
                          from Chateau Latour when The Fresh Prince began. "I
                          sucked," he says, "badly." He forgot his stage marks and
                          silently mouthed other actors' lines in fear of missing cues.
                          But the show was a modest hit from the [[perthousand]]
                          beginning, giving Smith time to grow in the role. "By the
                          third season," he says, "I came into my own."
                          Smith met his future wife, then a fashion-design student, in
                          1991, when both were visiting a mutual friend on the set
                          of A Different World. Smith was smitten; Zampino was
                          not. But he began to phone her and wore her down with
                          his charm. In May 1992 they married, and later that year
                          their son--who is nicknamed Trey--was born on the first
                          day of the rest of Smith's life. "When the doctor handed
                          him to me, I realized things were different now," he says.
                          It started with the car ride home. "That was the worst
                          drive," Smith recalls. "You're obeying every law. You
                          can't be a reckless young man anymore."
                          Trey is no wiseacre chip off the block. When he visited
                          the Bel-Air set, the boy was unfailingly respectful. "If Trey
                          wanted something," recalls Smith's Bel-Air costar Alfonso
                          Ribeiro, "he'd ask, `Excuse me, can I play with this?' He
                          knew about the bell that went off when we started taping.
                          When he heard it, Trey would put his finger to his mouth
                          and say `Shhhhh!' "
                          In Independence Day, Trey's dad also had some
                          pantomiming to do. Because special effects are put into a
                          film last, stars often "act blind," Smith explains. "In a scene
                          with an alien, you're talking to air, or a sign that says
                          `ALIEN.' " For cockpit scenes during the dogfights
                          between military jets and spacecraft, Smith says
                          Emmerich stood off-camera, saying, `There's an explosion
                          to your left! Now the plane dips to your right!' . . . I heard
                          all this and was thinking, `Wait. I never knew this is what
                          Han Solo had to go through.' "
                          Even that, Smith admits, was a lot easier than some
                          aspects of real life, particularly the crash and burn of his
                          marriage, which led to a $900,000 lump-sum divorce
                          settlement for Zampino plus $24,000 per month in
                          alimony and child support. She doesn't discuss the
                          breakup; Smith does so only in vague terms. "We had a
                          new son, and my career was taking off. There was a lot of
                          pressure that didn't allow the marriage to blossom," he
                          says. He pauses. "You know how you're on the freeway
                          and you see that one car on the side of the road?
                          Thousands of cars drive by it. Well, every once in a while
                          it's your turn to be broken down. And you wait for the
                          tow truck to come. That's how I viewed that difficult time
                          in my life."
                          Enter Jada Pinkett's Towing Service. The two met in
                          1990, during Bel-Air's first season, when Pinkett
                          auditioned to play Smith's girlfriend (at 5'0", she was
                          deemed too short) and continued with casual social
                          meetings on the young African-American Hollywood
                          scene. Then last spring their relationship began to change.
                          "I helped him understand what happened in his marriage,"
                          says Pinkett, who had recently broken up with a
                          boyfriend, "and he helped me see what happened in my
                          relationship. He's become my best friend. There's nothing
                          I can't say to him, nothing I can't share." Smith agrees.
                          "Jada is the first person I've been with willing to accept
                          that it's not always going to be great," he says, "but that's
                          okay."
                          Though they have no plans to marry and Pinkett owns her
                          own condo in L.A., she can usually be found at Smith's
                          8,000-square-foot, southwestern-style home an hour's
                          drive northwest of town. "Everyone complains about the
                          distance, but you feel like you're away from L.A.," Smith
                          says. "The energy of L.A. can really beat you down."
                          Though still widely known by his nom du groove, Smith
                          has no plans to record more rap. Most of today's hip hop,
                          he says, "has taken a negative turn--glorifying ignorance,
                          violence and misogyny. It's about hate, and that's one
                          thing I don't understand." Yet like the Fresh Prince of old,
                          Smith understands fun. One day on the Men in Black set,
                          the actor swiped several huge, hairy, fake insects from the
                          prop truck. Three or four times that day he sneaked up
                          behind brother Harry and stuck them on his shirt, terrifying
                          his poor sibling. "All the things the Fresh Prince stood for,
                          all the fun he had, still exist inside me," Smith says. "Those
                          just aren't the dominant aspects of my personality
                          anymore. The Fresh Prince can still come over for dinner,
                          but he has to go home after he eats."
                          -- GREGORY CERIO
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