Oscar winner Will Smith reveals his softer, emotional side at Sharjah International Book Fair

Dubai: Oscar-winning Hollywood actor Will Smith didn’t begin his session at the Sharjah International Book Fair 2025 by talking about movies or fame. Instead, he started with a confession: he has been trying to reclaim himself.

“Suddenly, we wake up one day and our self-esteem depends on other people saying we’re good enough,” he told an auditorium filled with fans who had squeezed into the Expo Center to hear him speak.

“For me over the past couple of years, it has been the process of taking back my self-esteem from the world.”

That tone — introspective, vulnerable and unexpectedly philosophical — shaped his entire conversation.

The audience, who had already erupted into cheers when Smith appeared in a white shirt and warm grin, quickly realised this was not going to be a simple celebrity Q&A. It was closer to a public reckoning, one shaped by the years he described as “quiet transformation.”

At the core of that transformation was a book he didn’t initially expect to change him: his 2021 memoir Will. What he thought would be a documentation of his journey became, instead, a mirror.

“Getting to know myself and having to be honest with myself about who I am versus who I thought I was is a humbling experience,” he said. Writing forced him into corners of his personality he’d avoided. It also gave him a new mission: “I encourage everyone to write your story. It is such an enlightening process, to use words to write what you are experiencing.”

Lessons from the Middle East

The conversation shifted dramatically when host Anas Bukhash asked about the Middle East — and Smith’s entire posture brightened. If writing taught him who he had been, this region, he said, represented who he could become creatively. “I’m really excited about the Middle East opening up,” he said. “It’s one of the only places on earth that has thousands of years of stories that hasn’t been mined on a global scale.” The actor spoke with genuine enthusiasm about collaborating with regional creatives, searching for narratives hidden in history, culture, and identity.

“To be a part of the region as it is opening, to be able to work with creatives, find stories and tell stories — that really excites me.”

Smith sees storytelling as a universal pulse. Strip away accents, religions, and borders, he argued, and human experience still beats the same way everywhere.

“There are things that are beyond race, creed, color and culture,” he said. “There are universally relatable ideas and that’s where I live and that’s where I work.” His self-described gift? “I can see the part of the story that doesn’t need language to translate.”

Despite his upbeat reflections, he did not escape a difficult question: does he feel misunderstood? Smith’s answer was instant and disarming. “We don’t even understand ourselves,” he said, to laughter and applause. “It’s almost impossible for one person to understand another person.” It was less a complaint and more an invitation — for grace, for patience, for curiosity.

Throughout the evening, he returned to a recurring theme: the hollowness of external success.

“Success in the material world is utterly incapable of making people happy,” he said. Fulfillment for him now comes from knowing “that my work, energy, ideas and God-given gifts are helpful to others.”

He also warned about the toxicity of constant digital consumption. “The detox of that is critical,” he said of social media. “Because it can poison your mind.” Solitude, he argued, is not isolation — it’s recovery.

By the time he wrapped up the conversation, Smith had covered everything from childhood conditioning to the dangers of online noise, from self-forgiveness to the future of Middle Eastern storytelling. But the most striking thing about the evening was not his fame or the frenzy that greeted him — it was the gentleness with which he spoke about rebuilding himself.