Vote up the most interesting fun facts you learned from this list
Rapper. Producer. TV legend. Movie star. Is there anything Will Smith can't do? He's won Grammys and been nominated for Oscars. His movies have made billions of dollars. He even came back from near-bankruptcy when he was just a kid. And now, the Fresh Prince is one of the most famous and successful people in the world. But do you know all of the lesser-known Will Smith trivia out there?
In addition to being a great rapper, Smith is a crazy versatile actor. He's a guy who can seemingly do any kind of movie. Like action movies? Try Bad Boys, Enemy of the State, and Independence Day. Preferaction comedies? How about Men in Black, MIIB, andHancock. Dramas? There's always Seven Pounds, Ali, and The Pursuit of Happyness. There are seemingly endless Will Smith movies to use as examples. What can't this guy do?
But who is Will Smith? What's his regular, day-to-day life like outside his movie roles? Do you know about some of the bolder career moves he made early on? His rap background? His career as a producer? His pure and insurmountable will power? (We didn't intend for that pun, but it works).
We've poured through the history of the man. Through interview after interview, fact after fact, and quote after quote in order to bring you the best stories about who Will Smith really is. Whether you love him for his rapping or his acting, there is so much to learn about the man, the myth, the (I am) legend. Consider this your own personal Will Smith biography or wiki. These are fun facts you didn't know about Will Smith!
He Will Not Be Out-Worked. He Will Die On That Treadmill.
Will Smith's work ethic is a thing of legend. He got where he by being the hardest worker in the room. He prides himself in this.
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?"
An extremely accomplished rapper at a young age, the Fresh Prince released his first album with DJ Jazzy Jeff just three weeks before they graduated high school. Their first album made the top 200 Billboard charts. A year later they release their second album, He's the DJ I'm the Rapper. It hit number four on the charts! It ended up going triple platinum, making Smith a teenage millionaire.
Remember way back on Fresh Prince will Will shows Uncle Phil he can do a Rubik's cube? Or when he gets the man's attention with one in Pursuit of Happyness? Well, it's not movie magic, that's him. In real life, he's a pro at cranking through that ridiculously hard puzzle.
It's a long-standing rumor that Will Smith turned down a scholarship to Boston's prestigious MIT. This is only half true. "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college," Smith said.
He Really Was Born And Raised In West Philadelphia
Willard Christopher Smith Jr. really was born in West Philadelphia. (We're not sure if the playground was where he spent most of his days, as he went to Catholic school.) He was born on September 25th, 1968. His mom was a school board employee and his dad owned a refrigerator company. He's the second of their four children.
After all these years of waiting, Will Smith announced in 2015 that he had plans to put out another album. He apparently already had 30+ tracks already done. "I'm at the beginning of the process, you know, shaking the rust off, knocking the dust off," Smith said to Beats 1 Radio.
To top it off, he announced a tour with the new album so fans can get jiggy all over again! He even said he'd be bringing back DJ Jazzy Jeff. "Jeff and I actually never have done a full tour, I was always on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, I was always making a movie so we've never actually done a full tour. So I'm looking for [this] summer to be the first time that we go out on a full world tour."
