Will Smith recently spoke candidly about the emotional trauma he endured, that he once contemplated killing his father to avenge his abused mother.
The actor spoke about this in his upcoming memoir, Will, in which he share details about his childhood and his strained relationship with his dad, U.S. Air Force veteran Willard Carrol Smith Sr.
In an excerpt published by People magazine, Will said his father was a complex man who was “at every game, play, and recital,” but also a “violent” alcoholic who terrorized his family for years.
“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed,” he 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.”
Will added that this caused him so much pain in the following years, as he regretted not standing up to his dad and protecting his mother in that moment.
“Within everything that I have done since then — the awards and accolades, the spotlights and attention, the characters and the laughs — there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day,” he continued. “For failing her in the moment. For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward. 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.”
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