Willard Carroll Smith II was born on September 25, 1968, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in the city’s Wynnefield neighborhood in West Philadelphia. His father, Willard Carroll Smith Sr., was a U.S. Air Force veteran who ran a refrigeration and air conditioning engineering business, and his mother, Caroline Bright, was a Philadelphia school board administrator and Carnegie Mellon University graduate. Smith grew up in a Baptist household with an older sister, Pamela, and younger twin siblings, Harry and Ellen, and he attended the private Our Lady of Lourdes elementary school before going on to Overbrook High School, where classmates nicknamed him “Prince” for his ability to talk his way out of trouble.

These details of his upbringing, parents’ occupations and early education are documented on his Wikipedia biography page.

Smith began rapping at age 12 and met producer and DJ Jeffrey “DJ Jazzy Jeff” Townes in 1985, forming the duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince while still in high school. Their 1986 single “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” became a regional hit before Smith had even graduated, and the pair’s 1988 album He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper produced the crossover single “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” which won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in February 1989. The sudden wealth led Smith to overspend and underpay his taxes in the late 1980s, and the Internal Revenue Service later moved to seize his property over a debt reported at roughly 2.8 million dollars, a financial crisis that pushed him toward a steadier income in television.

The first rap Grammy won by DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince for “Parents Just Don’t Understand” in 1989 is documented on his list of awards and nominations on Wikipedia.

NBC built the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air around Smith in 1990, casting him as a fictionalized version of himself sent from West Philadelphia to live with wealthy relatives in Los Angeles, and the show ran for six seasons through 1996 while turning him into a mainstream television star. He moved into film with a supporting role in Six Degrees of Separation in 1993 and a lead role opposite Martin Lawrence in the buddy-cop comedy Bad Boys in 1995, then broke through as a global box office draw with the alien-invasion blockbuster Independence Day in 1996 and the sci-fi comedy Men in Black in 1997, both of which became among the highest-grossing films of their respective years.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s six-season run from 1990 to 1996 is documented on its Wikipedia page.

Smith built a three-decade film career defined by consistent box office success, becoming the only actor in Hollywood history credited with eight consecutive films grossing over 100 million dollars domestically, with a combined worldwide box office across his filmography reported at well over 10 billion dollars. He earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for Ali in 2002 and The Pursuit of Happyness in 2007 before finally winning the Oscar for Best Actor at the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, for his portrayal of Richard Williams, father and coach of Venus and Serena Williams, in King Richard, a role that also earned him the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild awards for Best Actor that same season.

His Best Actor win for King Richard at the 2022 Oscars is reported by NPR.

Beyond his Oscar and four Grammy Awards, Smith was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and received an honorary Cesar Award from the French film academy in 2005, recognition that reflected his crossover appeal as both a bankable Hollywood leading man and a Grammy-winning recording artist. For much of the 2000s and 2010s he was regularly described in entertainment press coverage as one of the most bankable and universally recognizable movie stars in the world, a reputation built on family-friendly blockbusters and a public persona built around charisma and relatability that predated his later career setbacks.

His Time 100 honor and honorary Cesar Award are documented on his Biography.com profile.

Rather than relying heavily on traditional celebrity endorsement contracts, Smith has leaned on his own intellectual property, launching Bel-Air Athletics in 2019 as a streetwear apparel line inspired by his breakout role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, complete with letterman jackets, varsity gear and accessories sold through limited seasonal drops. The brand let Smith monetize the nostalgia around his most iconic character directly rather than licensing his image to an outside sponsor, and it has released multiple collections in the years since its launch, positioning Smith as an owner of consumer product revenue rather than purely a paid spokesperson.

The launch and concept behind Bel-Air Athletics are reported by WWD.

Smith co-founded the multimedia company Westbrook Inc. in July 2019 alongside Jada Pinkett Smith, longtime business partner Miguel Melendez and Kosaku Yada, structuring it as a holding company over Overbrook Entertainment, Red Table Talk Enterprises, Westbrook Studios and Westbrook Media, and in January 2022 the company took a strategic minority investment from Candle Media. Separately, in 2018 Smith co-founded the venture capital fund Dreamers VC with Japanese athletes Keisuke Honda and Kosaku Yada and Nomura Holdings as anchor investor, an early-stage fund aimed at connecting American startups with Japanese corporate capital that has since built a portfolio including dozens of companies.

The founding and structure of Westbrook Inc. are reported by Deadline, and Dreamers VC’s mission and portfolio are described on the fund’s official site.

Smith’s primary residence is a roughly 25,000 square foot mansion on about 150 acres in Calabasas, California, built over roughly seven years starting in 2003 and reported to be worth around 42 million dollars, a compound large enough to have its own ZIP code and featuring a sports complex, recording studio, cinema wing and a dedicated house for the family’s dogs. The Smiths have also owned additional properties over the years, including a Hidden Hills residence and a since-sold oceanfront home in Hanalei, Hawaii, that they purchased in 2009 for 13.5 million dollars and resold in 2011 for 20 million dollars.

The size, cost and features of the Calabasas estate are documented by TheRichest.