Hollywood: Will Smith reveals he wanted to kill his father over abuse
In upcoming book ‘Will’, Hollywood star recalls violent incident from when he was nine
Hollywood actor Will Smith has opened up about how he had dark thoughts about killing his father in order to avenge his mother.
In his upcoming book ‘Will’, the ‘Men in Black’ actor described his father as a man with many contrasting sides.
“My father was violent, but he was also at every game, play, and recital. He was an alcoholic, but he was sober at every premiere of every one of my movies,” he wrote, according to an excerpt released by People magazine.
He added: “The same intense perfectionism that terrorised his family put food on the table every night of my life.”
Smith, known for his roles in projects such as ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ and ‘Bad Boys’, recalled a violent incident he witnessed when he was a child.
“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed,” Smith wrote. “I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am.”
The actor added: “What you have come to understand as “Will Smith,” the alien-annihilating MC, the bigger-than-life movie star, is largely a construction — a carefully crafted and honed character — designed to protect myself. To hide myself from the world. To hide the coward.”
His parents, Caroline and Willard Carroll Smith Sr, eventually broke up when he was a teen and then divorced in 2000.
However, Smith says in the excerpt that his anger over his past bubbled up again later when the actor was taking care of his cancer-stricken father.
“One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me. The path between the two rooms goes past the top of the stairs. As a child I’d always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him,” Smith wrote.
“I paused at the top of the stairs. I could shove him down, and easily get away with it,” he added. “As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom.”
Smith’s father died in 2016.
The actor’s memoir is set to release on November 9.