Will Smith Opens Up About Working With His Son Jaden And Parenting

The 44-year-old actor has just finished a two week international press tour promoting his new sci-fi action film 'After Earth' and is now making his rounds in the United States, going from prime time late night talk show to magazine interview.

In an interview for Haute Living however, he was particularly candid about working with his 15-year-old son Jaden on their second film together, his philosophy of parenting, the legacy he wants to leave behind and putting those obnoxious emancipation rumors to bed once and for all.

'My dream was that I want to be the biggest movie star in the world and I set out to just make big movies,' Smith tells the magazine about having to recently reevaluate his life.

'Three years ago, I had Hancock and I Am Legend in a six-month period and I felt complete. And then I was like ‘Uhoh,’ and had to really go back to the drawing board of my dreams. I even realized that material world dreams are dangerous.'

The actor goes on to describe he and wife Jada Pinkett-Smith's parenting style as well.

'I grew up in a family business so my father, my mother and all my brothers and sisters worked in the family business, so that’s really the only way I know how to parent,' he explains.

'I think that, specifically in African American households, the idea coming out of slavery, there’s a concept of your children being property and that was a major part that Jada and I released with our kids. We respect our children the way we would respect any other person.'

 As his newest film tells the story a father and son stranded on a wild planet earth one thousand years in the future, Smith also delves into the universal feeling of being a worried father.

'The concept of life and death is what comes into play as a father,' the Pursuit of Happyness star says.

'Whether you are watching basketball or washing the dishes, in the mind of a warrior father, everything is life or death. The way you wash those dishes, the way you clean your room, the way you handle your schoolwork, one day its going to come back in a life or death scenario.'

Despite being the only actor to have eight straight films gross over one hundred million at the domestic box office and open at number one, as well as winning four Grammy Awards for his music, Smith thinks that he is only beginning to create his legacy right now.

'I want my legacy to be inspiration, that I inspired people to become everything that they dreamed and even the things that they never dreamed,'  he says.

'That’s what I am doing with Jaden now, helping him develop and learn and grow. I want that to be my legacy.'

As for the emancipation rumors that have dogged just about every interview he has done on this press tour since Tokyo, Smith repeats what he and his son have been saying the whole time. 'Yeah, that was a joke! I made a joke. He is definitely not going anywhere; he is so scared of being out on his own,' he says. 'Willow is probably going to be emancipated before Jaden!'

After Earth hits theaters worldwide on May 31.

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