Getting Jiggy With Will Smith

Added: 10/15/2007

Few actors have the broad appeal that Will Smith has even in the earliest days of his career when he was a rapper. From his work on television and then on into movies Will Smith is able to play a comedy role and a dramatic role in the same year and make both look convincing. He is in demand for animated movies for children and serious movies with a message for adults. He is a very talented actor with an impressive resume.

There are not many entertainers anymore who really fit that word “entertainer” like a Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. did many years ago. Not many entertainers can make hit records, hit television shows, hit drama movies, and hit comedy movies while being taken seriously in all of those mediums. Will Smith is the true definition of the word entertainer and his career has spanned nearly all of the public entertainment mediums and he has found success in all of them. From his early days as the rapper the Fresh Prince with his DJ Jazzy Jeff Will Smith first conquered the music industry with his hit song Parents Just Don’t Understand. Instantly he had a recognizable sound and a recognizable image and that image played well with a very large audience. The next logical place to move a successful image that plays well is to television. After his hit single was done racing up the charts Will Smith took the lead role in the hit television situation comedy The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. His television show was on the air for years and it was not very long before demand grew to see Will Smith in major motion pictures. It was in the genre of major motion pictures that Will Smith brought together all of his talent to create the career of the complete entertainer.

Will Smith’s film career was a gradual rise and it started with the 1992 movie Where The Day Takes You. This movie didn’t get any critical or box office acclaim but it did help Will Smith get his career started. In 1993 he played a minor role in the comedy Made In America which was a minor financial success but it was nothing even close to what Will Smith was in store for. In 1995 Will Smith stunned audiences when he played the bad boy detective in the hit movie Bad Boys. The movie starred two comedy actors, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, as detectives with attitude and no one was really sure how audiences would react. Audiences loved it and even though the one liners in the movie were dismissed as corny and clichй they still helped to carry the movie for audiences. Will Smith proved he had acting range and his career blossomed from there.

From Bad Boys on Will Smith became one of the most in demand actors in Hollywood. He is an Oscar nominated actor that commands one of the highest salaries in Hollywood because of his box office appeal. Audiences seem to flock to Will Smith whether he is playing in a comedy, an action movie, or a serious drama. Audiences seem willing to not only give Smith the room he needs to grow as an actor but to also look forward to his next project even if his last project was a disappointment. For example, even after the disappointment of Wild Wild West in 1999 and The Legend Of Bagger Vance in 2000 audiences still flocked to see Will Smith in the critically acclaimed hit movie Ali. When you have earned that kind of favor with the movie going public your stock in Hollywood will stay very high. He has twice been nominated for Best Leading Actor at the Oscars. Once for Ali in 2001 and once for The Pursuit Of Happiness in 2006. To this point the Oscar has eluded him but it may not be long before he earns that highest of Hollywood honors.

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