Will Smith is arguably the biggest movie superstar of the last two decades, up in the upper-echelons of box-office “super powers ” with Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, as well as Jim Carrey, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their heydays. No-one could guarantee box-office gold (i.e. $100 million+) like Will Smith, and what’s more everyone loved the guy. Even the box-office disappointments of Wild Wild West couldn’t keep him down, until 2013’s After Earth that is. A critical and financial flop (it opened behind Fast & Furious 6 and, most notably, Now You See Me on its opening weekend), it is one of the reasons for Smith’s relative retreat from the limelight for over a year, at least in part.
Now the acting heavyweight is out to get his mojo back with three big releases in the next 18 months: he co-stars with Margot Robbie in con-thriller Focus which opens later this month, potential Oscar-worthy drama Concussion on Christmas Day, and somewhat surprisingly, DC Universe villain team-up Suicide Squad, in which Smith will play Deadshot opposite Robbie, who is playing Harley Quinn, and Oscar winner Jared Leto, who is playing The Joker.
Speaking on the promotional tour for Focus, Smith spoke to Esquire about his career failures, and his new found appreciation of his position in Hollywood.
“That [After Earth] was the most painful failure in my career,” states Smith. “Wild Wild West was less painful than After Earth, because my son was involved in After Earth and I led him into it. That was excruciating. What I learned from that failure is how you win. I got reinvigorated after the failure of After Earth. I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way. When I was fifteen my girlfriend cheated on me, and I decided that if I was number one, no woman would ever cheat on me. All I have to do is make sure that no one’s ever better than me and I’ll have the love that my heart yearns for. And I never released that [feeling] and moved into a mature way of looking at the world and my artistry and love until the failure of After Earth, when I had to accept that it’s not a good source of creation.”
“After Earth comes out, I get the box-office numbers on Monday, and I was devastated for about twenty-four minutes, and then my phone rang and I found out my father had cancer,” he adds. “That put it in perspective —viciously….that Monday started the new phase of my life, a new concept: Only love is going to fill that hole…and I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.”
You can read the full interview through the link above, where Smith talks about his family, love for Stockard Channing, and Hugh Jackman’s body fat.
Focus is released in the UK and USA on February 27th – stay tuned for Flickering Myth for our review of the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszH_jfuJoo8HCG1-lGjvfH2F&v=lXOAy1VNGBA&feature=player_embedded
Originally published February 14, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
