Will Smith

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A lot of people that I know are picking heroes to write about like Joan of Arc, and people that are known and have freed people, or led them to safety, or were an overall “Superman” type hero. My hero is a little different than everyone else’s. My hero is the rapper/actor/just a great respectable man, named Will Smith. My hero has not lead people through wars or saved a massive amount of people’s lives, but he has all the traits that I want my hero to have. He is funny, he speaks his mind, he has his own opinion, he's a family man, he is responsible, and he just has the right personality and smarts, to be someone who is looked up to. That’s why I chose him as my hero.

Will Smith was born Willard Smith II, to Caroline and Willard Smith I. He is the second of four children. Will grew up on the west side of Philadelphia in a nice little suburban area. It is said that Will got the nickname "Prince," because of the fact that he could always slip in and out of trouble, and that name stuck with him, even on his first chance to make it big, on his show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” (According to IMDb) When Will was growing up, at around the age of twelve, he teamed up with his friends named Jeff Townes, and from then they were known as the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff. They were a hit duo and best friends.

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Together, the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff, made hit songs like “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Girls Ain't Nothing but Trouble”,which are both on the hit record "He's the DJ, I'm the rapper." Will is one of the only rappers that does not cuss when they rap, and that is one thing that I respect about him. That is one of the biggest traits that he has that makes him a very positive role model. There have been plenty of other artists to criticize him and talk about him on songs, like calling him names because he doesn’t cuss, but he just brushed it off. But even though Will was a hit, he wanted to do more with his life. So at the young age of 20, he talked to the NBC and got to make a show of his own called “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” which was a big hit. In the show, Will portrayed a young, juvenile, urban kid, from Philadelphia, who got into some trouble, and his mother sent him to live with his aunt, uncle, cousins, and their butler, in the rich and high class Beverly Hills. This comedic show lasted for six years.

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While the show was going on, and even after the show went off, Will still had a lot of ambition. His first movie was called "Six Degrees of Separation," where he portrayed a gay, con-artist. In the movie, the script called for Smith to kiss another man, but he didn’t do it. Now he said he would have, because it is just acting and that’s what he does. That is another reason why he is my hero, because he recognized this mistake, and realized that he was wrong. But after all of this acting where he didn’t play a strong manly character, he also realized that, if he was going to play roles like this it is going to change the way people look at him, even with his music, so he quickly changed it up. In 1995 he came out with the hit action movie, alongside Martin Lawrence, "Bad Boys." This movie was a hit and everyone was begging for a sequel which finally came out eight years later in 2003. Smith’s next flick was also an action one, the film "Independence Day." This film was about aliens that came to earth and Smith’s character was to fight them. In the next years he came out with the hits “Men in Black”, “Men in Black II”, “The Wild Wild West” (which didn’t do as well as he expected) and various movies like this. After doing these movies, he was inspired to come out with more albums so in the next three years, he came out with "Big Willie Style," which had the hit "Getting’ Jiggy With It," and "Willineum," not to mention the soundtracks for all of his movies.

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Right now, Will Smith is a big family man and though he has a lot of money, he is not someone who will spend it on chains and fast cars. He invests his money in new projects like shows and movies, which is more respectable to me than spending it on frivolous things (even though I do want a few frivolous things myself.) He is a respectable man --not to mention he is talented and very skillful.