Top 10 Will Smith

He’s a movie megastar and hugely successful recording artist, with a beautiful actress wife and three kids, one of whom is already following in his big screen footsteps. So if he wasn’t so charismatic and damn well likeable, we’d probably hate Will Smith’s guts. But we don’t, because the man’s funny, generous and a gent, and here are his Top 10 defining moments on screen. So far...

His Top 10 Films

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996)

Will Smith enjoyed late 80s musical success as one-half (or one-third, if you count beat-boxer Ready Rock C) of rap combo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, but TV became his saviour when a hefty income tax bill threatened to derail the Smith Express at the first station. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air put a fictionalised version of Will’s life and cheerful, upbeat rap persona into living rooms across America, and then – with snowballing popularity – the world.

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Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Any doubts over Smith’s smarts are eradicated by considering this choice – a talky, tricky part that offered both big-screen status and stage-play respect. Smith shared that screen with names like Donald Sutherland, Ian McKellen and Stockard Channing – the latter reprising her Broadway role from the play of the same name – and showed off his acting muscle as Paul, a clever, charming young man who worms his way into the lives of a couple in Upper East Side Manhattan.

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Bad Boys (1995)

Mike Lowrey is to Will Smith what John McClane is to Bruce Willis. Successful telly stars need a blockbuster hit to rocket them firmly across the breach, it’s Bad Boys that really set Smith soaring. A Simpson/ Bruckheimer (The Rock, Days of Thunder) production of a Michael Bay (Armageddon, Transformers) film, this buddy-cop actioner perfectly showcased Smith’s looks and wisecracking banter in an orgy of explosion, excess, and Will running in slo-mo with his shirt undone.

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Independence Day (1996)

If you’re gonna go large and loud, why not follow it up with more of the same? The apocalypse-obsessed Roland Emmerich was ringleader for this sfx-fest of alien annihilation, Jeff Goldblum’s on comic relief duty, Bill Pullman provides a stern, statesmanlike jawline, so it falls to Smith to cement his action hero credentials as a fighter pilot captain and chief ET-ass-whupper. All his segments are pure Top Gun, and he grabs probably the best lines too: “Welcome. To. Earth!”

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Men in Black (1997)

Melding his two former roles, back in extra-terrestrial pest-control mode and inching ever closer to all-out leading man status, Will is recruited by Tommy Lee Jones (in one of Tommy’s all-time iconic performances) into the MIB. Director Barry Sonnenfeld’s (Get Shorty) adaptation of the comic book series is stylish and funny, there’s great chemistry between Smith and Jones, and – in the words of Agent J himself – the real difference is that Smith makes this look good.

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Enemy of the State (1998)

Reuniting with producers Simpson/Bruckheimer, Smith at last stepped into solo leading man duties for a conspiracy thriller that tapped into the ever-increasing pre-Millennial paranoia about government surveillance and tech-monitoring. We’re all being watched, and extremely vulnerable, is the message from director Tony Scott’s frenetic fear-mongerer, which whips our everyman lawyer Will into a life-collapsing frenzy with only reclusive ex-spook Gene Hackman for an ally.

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Ali (2001)

When you take a hit, the best defence is clearly to come out fighting. Despite being Smith’s fifth consecutive film to take over $100m worldwide, Wild Wild West (1999) was a widely panned disappointment. And before he took the understandably bankable options of Men in Black and Bad Boys sequels, Will went characterful. First, with The Legend of Bagger Vance in 2000, and then beefing up for the impressive, real-life role of Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann’s (Heat, Collateral) moving biopic.

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Hitch (2005)

It’s easy to feel that this is Smith’s stock-in-trade, but Hitch is actually his only out-and-out rom-com so far. And ok, so it’s by the numbers, but this is exhibit A of the Will Smith Factor™ – that he’s good even in an otherwise ordinary film, and his charm is often enough to lift the whole thing up a notch. Amid the chuckles and the pratfalls, there’s even some vague musing on modern dating, as love doctor Will schools awkward Kevin James to woo celebrity babe Amber Valleta, while in turn falling for feisty journo Eva Mendes.

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The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

Perhaps his most critically acclaimed performance yet, Smith received an Oscar nomination for playing Chris Gardner, a salesman/stockbroker who must battle crippling debts, insane working hours and borderline homelessness to support himself and his five year old son (played by Jaden Smith, one of Will’s real-life sons, who later starred in The Karate Kid remake). It’s a powerful, emotive, biographical drama, based on Gardner’s own memoirs.

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I Am Legend (2007)

With only his dependable hound for company, Smith strides around a desolate New York, variously hunting for supplies, working on an anti-serum, and trying not to get munched by the hordes of virally-infected, vampire-like monsters seething in the shadows. It’s a far cry from the novel (or the 1971, Charlton Heston-starring Omega Man), and certainly has its flaws, but I Am Legend is Big Willie Style and then some: thrills and spills from an iconic, entertaining and ever-watchable leading man.

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Darren Bignell