All About Will Smith’s Parents, Caroline Bright and Willard Carroll Smith Sr.

Will Smith experienced many ups and downs during his childhood while being raised by his parents, Caroline Bright and Willard Carroll Smith Sr.

Growing up in West Philadelphia, the actor was one of four children. He has one older sister, Pamela, and two younger siblings, twins Harry and Ellen. As the eldest son, Will was often privy to his father’s violent outbursts. In his memoirs of the same name from 2021. Wantthe actor revealed that his late father often turned to alcohol and aggression, most often directed at him and his mother.

“Will gets punished first because he’s older,” Will’s younger brother Harry told PEOPLE in 1996. “Then he’d go around the corner and make faces, and we’d laugh — and get punished even worse.”

Willard’s behavior strained his relationship with Will and his marriage to Caroline. The couple separated when Will was a teenager and later divorced in 2000. After their split, Willard became a father again to a daughter named Ashley Marie Pettway.

Will and his father maintained a difficult relationship for most of his life, but things changed when Willard was given a life-threatening diagnosis and told he had only six weeks to live. Willard died in 2016, and his death was a key anecdote in Will’s memoir.

Five years later, Will recalled how he and his father “coordinated” in a new way in the time leading up to his death. “My father and I had time to talk about everything,” he told an audience at an event in Brooklyn in 2021. “We had weeks and weeks; every single conversation was rich and powerful, and we were clean. Some people don’t get time. ”

In January 2024, Caroline celebrated her 87th birthday. Will marked the special day with a sweet Instagram post, featuring a photo of the mother-son duo laughing.

“Happy birthday, mom-mom!” he captioned the post. “There’s nothing better than laughing with your mother.”

Here’s everything there is to know about Will Smith’s parents, Caroline Bright and Willard Carroll Smith Sr.

They raised their children in West Philadelphia

Will Smith with his mother, Caroline and his siblings, Pamela, Harry and Ellen.

Will Smith on Instagram

Will and his siblings grew up in a middle-class family in West Philadelphia during the 1960s and 1970s.

Amidst the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Will opened up about his experiences with racism and shared how he was called a racist slur by police officers “on more than 10 occasions” when he was a kid in Philly.

“I understand what it’s like to be in that situation with the police, to feel like you’re being occupied. It’s an occupying force,” he said in the podcast. On one with Angela Rye.

The I Am Legend the actor added that he was stopped by the police “often” and had significantly different experiences with the police than his white classmates. “The white kids were happy when the cops showed up, and my heart always started pounding,” he said.

They have three more children: Pamela, Harry and Ellen

Will Smith with his mother Caroline Bright and his siblings — Pamela, Henry and Ellen — in 2021.

Will Smith on Instagram

The couple shares four children: two sons and two daughters. They had their elder Pamela in 1964, and Will, who inherited his father’s name, was born in 1968. Their family grew by two in 1971 with twins Harry and Ellen.

Will and his younger brother have a close relationship. Harry once worked as Will’s accountant before joining the team at Will and Jade Pinkett Smith’s production company, Overbrook Entertainment. The brothers also tried their hand at real estate business together.

Harry is a father of two: he shares daughter Sydney with ex Melissa Montoya and son Langston with MTV’s Ananda Lewis Total request live. Harry is currently the CEO of distribution company Smith Global Media.

Ellen is the founder and executive director of a non-profit called Dining with Divas, which organizes holiday dinners for mothers and families in need. Ellen is also a licensed cosmetology instructor and a single mother of two, according to PhillyChitChat.

The eldest of the Smith family, Pamela, runs her own retail store called Pash Boutique.

Willard owned his own refrigeration company

Willard was “always uptight,” according to his son. Despite his work ethic and advanced skills, Willard was repeatedly denied a promotion at the hardware store where he worked because of his race – so he started his own refrigeration company.

The operation eventually grew to include electrical technicians, Will wrote in his memoirs. Although his father was always busy, he “was able to keep four kids fed and clothed and still manage to find time to spend with us,” he told PEOPLE.

Caroline worked as a school board administrator

Will Smith and his mom Caroline Bright attend the premiere of ‘Lakeview Terrace’ in September 2008 in New York City.

Jim Spellman/WireImage

As a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the Philadelphia School Board, Caroline made sure that academics were paramount in her household. Against her wishes, college wasn’t in the cards for Will, who was focused on launching his rap career.

During the performance at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in November 2021, Will recalled that telling his mother he wasn’t going to college was the “worst thing” he could have said to her. The actor was admitted to the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1986.

“When I told her I wasn’t going to college because I wanted to rap … she had no idea,” Will said, adding that Willard gave him a year to pursue a music career before going to school. “Within a year, we won the first Grammy ever awarded to a rap artist.”

As for school, Will noted that they weren’t allowed to use the word “isn’t” in their house and that his mother was a stickler for grammar.

“I remember once running out and screaming to my friends, ‘Whoa, where are you going to be?’ And my mother said, ‘Uh-uh. Let’s hope that they will stand behind that proposal,’ he said.

They divorced in 2000

Will Smith with his mother Caroline Bright and wife Jada Pinkett Smith at the 64th Golden Globe Awards in January 2007.

AFF / Alamy

Caroline and Willard were legally divorced in 2000, although they separated when Will was a teenager. The actor wrote extensively about his parents’ split in his memoir of the same name, including how he and his father made a “sneaky Ponzi-style deal” to cover the unpaid $140,000 Willard owed Caroline in child support.

“I was stuck. Dad didn’t have $140,000 and Mom-Mom didn’t want to make any concessions. And there was no version of me letting my dad go to jail,” Will wrote.

He cut his father a check for the amount of the debt which was transferred to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and then to the Carolinas. The money wire made Will “the first person in the history of Pennsylvania to pay child support on his own,” he joked.

When Caroline learned that Will had paid the debt, she issued a check to her son, which, he said, made her “the first person in the history of Pennsylvania to pay back child support that they paid themselves.”

Will had a complicated relationship with his father

Will Smith and his father Willard Carroll Smith Sr. at the BET Awards in June 2002.

Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy

Will’s relationship with his father was not always smooth. In his memoirs, the artist said that Will, although his father always supported him, witnessed his outbursts.

“My father was violent, but he was also at every game, play and recital,” he wrote. “He was an alcoholic, but he was sober at every premiere of every movie of mine. He listened to every record. He visited every studio. The same intense perfectionism that terrorized his family put food on the table every night of my life.”

The actor was also affected by Willard’s abuse of Caroline.

“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the head so hard that she collapsed,” Will recalled. “I saw her spitting blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, defined who I am.”

The traumatic event stayed with Will until his father’s death. He wrote in his book that as a child he promised to “avenge his mother one day” when he “becomes strong enough” and “stops being a coward”.

The idea that he would one day “kill” Willard came to light while Will was visiting his ailing father in the hospital. The actor recalled that “darkness rose up inside me” while helping his dad in the bathroom.

“I stopped at the top of the stairs. I could push him down, and get out easily,” he wrote. “As the decades of hurt, anger and resentment receded, I shook my head and wheeled Daddio into the bathroom.”

Caroline opened up about Will’s slap at the 2022 Oscars

Will Smith and his mother Caroline Bright at the Chatelet Theater in Paris.

Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

In 2022, Will made headlines when he slapped Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards in 2022 after Rock made a joke about Jade.

The comedian compared her hair, which she lost as a result of the autoimmune condition alopecia, to Demi Moore’s shaved head in the 1997 film. GI Jane. Will came out on stage and slapped Rock across the face. After returning to his desk, where Jada was also sitting, Will yelled, “Don’t put my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.”

The incident, which was broadcast live during the broadcast of the Oscars, has sparked a barrage of discourse. Caroline later spoke to Philadelphia ABC affiliate WPVI about the situation.

“He’s a very level-headed, human person. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him get fired up. The first time in his life,” she said. “I’ve never seen him do that.”

Later that night, Will took home the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in King Richard. “I’m proud that he is,” Caroline added.

Willard died in 2016

Will Smith with his father Willard Carroll Smith Sr. and sons Jaden and Trey at the Los Angeles premiere of ‘Spider-Man’ in 2002.

Paul Smith / Featureflash Archive / Alamy

Before releasing his memoir, Will spoke candidly about losing his father — including an emotional phone call they shared less than an hour before he died in 2016.

“Even when you’re expecting it, you don’t want to have to make the call,” he told the audience about the 3 a.m. call he made. “I say, ‘Hey, what’s up, Dad?’ and he says, ‘Hey, man. I think it’s tonight.’ ”

The father-son duo sat on FaceTime as they said their goodbyes.

“We sit and just look at each other for about 20 minutes. The soldier left, and all I could see was a scared little boy in him just like a scared little boy in me,” he said. “I hear my sister in the background, she’s saying, ‘Dad, you’re just watching’. Don’t you have anything you want to say to Will?’ ”

He continued, “And I see him looking for the last brick, looking for one thing, you know, but he’s empty. And he says, ‘Everything that I wasn’t told this m—–f—– until now, tonight he surely he won’t get any from me!’ We had another laugh and 45 minutes later Daddio was gone.”

Will concluded, “I didn’t even cry because we got a chance to finish.”

In 2016, Willard was “diagnosed with all sorts of things” and given six weeks to live – although he lived for another three months. Will said his father was “falling apart”.

“There’s something interesting when someone knows they’re going to die. If someone knows they’re dying and you know, it changes everything in the interaction. The greetings become rich and the goodbyes become so complete,” Will said.

He noted that the time to discuss their grievances was the best gift, adding, “We’ve grown closer to each other in a way we never have.”

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