Actor and rapper Will Smith said no one in his family was “happy” after reaching a zenith in his career and his children began to make waves in entertainment, noting it was the first time he realized “success and money” did not equal happiness.
During the 54-year-old actor’s appearance on Kevin Hart’s Peacock TV show “Hart to Heart,” the “Bad Boys” star said that 2010 was his “greatest year as an artist, as a parent.” It was that same year that son Jaden Smith appeared in the “Karate Kid” remake and daughter Willow Smith’s song “Whip My Hair” topped the charts.
“‘Karate Kid’ came out in June, ‘Whip My Hair’ came out in October,” Smith said. “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.’ We’ve talked about it, my father was abusive.”
“I told myself I would never have that kind of energy with my family and I had a dream, an idea of a family I was building,” he added. “Pretty much 2010 to 2012 I had achieved everything I had ever dreamed.”
Despite all this fame, the “Men In Black” star said, “Nobody in my family was happy.”
“No one wanted to be in a platoon,” Smith told Hart, according to Page Six. “Willow was the first one to begin the mutiny and it was my first realization 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,” he added, noting it was his first “introduction to the idea that material circumstances do not equal happiness.”
“You can have so much stuff that it makes you miserable,” the “Aladdin” star continued. “That was my first pull-back and I was like, ‘OK, what am I missing?’ I was driving the people around me in a way that I was leaving scorched earth around me.”
The actor is married to actress Jada Pinkett Smith, and they had two children together: Willow and Jaden. Smith is also father to son Trey, who he shares with ex-wife Sheree Zampino.
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