Will Smith reveals no one in his family was happy when they all became famous
Topics: News, Celebrity, Will Smith
Keryn Donnelly
Featured Image Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images. Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images.
Topics: News, Celebrity, Will Smith
On the outside, 2010 seemed like a great year for the Smith family.
Jaden landed his first big acting role in The Karate Kid and then 10-year-old Willow released her first single 'Whip My Hair'.
Will had also become one of Hollywood's leading actors after starring in Men in Black, Bad Boys, Hitch, and I, Robot.
But behind the scenes, Jaden and Willow's quick rise to fame was tearing the family apart.
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“2010 was like the greatest year as an artist, as a parent. Karate Kid came out in June, Whip My Hair came out in October,” Smith shared on Kevin Hart’s Hart to Heart series.
“I’m building this dream of a family I’ve had in my mind. I’m going to do it better than my father did it.”
But the dream didn't last long. Smith told Hart his kids ended up resenting him for pushing them into the spotlight at such a young age.
“Nobody in my family was happy,” he continued.
"No one wanted to be in a platoon. Willow was the first one to begin the mutiny and it was my first realisation that success and money don’t mean happiness.
"Up until that point, I really believed that you could succeed your way — to a house and a family … and you could win your way to happiness."
The 54-year-old said this period taught him about what really matters.
“Material circumstances do not equal happiness and, in a lot of cases, they can be the reason you’re not happy," he said on the podcast.
He continued: “You can have so much stuff that it makes you miserable … That was my first pullback, and I was like, ‘OK, what am I missing?’”
When Willow was 11 years old, she famously shaved her head during the 'Whip My Hair' tour to make a point to her father. She had told him she didn't want to continue the tour and he wouldn't let her back out.
In 2018, Willow revealed that it took her a couple of years to forgive her famous father for pushing her into the spotlight when she was just 10 years old.
“I definitely had to forgive you and daddy for that whole Whip My Hair thing. It was mostly daddy because he was so harsh at certain times,” Smith told her mother Jada Pinkett Smith during an episode of Red Table Talk.
“It was a couple of years, honestly.
"Trying to regain trust for not feeling like I was being listened to or like no one cared how I felt.”