Will

by Will Smith

I was unstoppable. It was the greatest streak of smash hits of any movie actor in Hollywood history. I became the highest-grossing film actor ever. And I still wasn’t even forty years old. The problem was, I’d conflated being successful with being loved and being happy. These are three separate things. And since I’d conflated them, I ended up suffering from an even more insidious version of the “subtle sickness,” which I can best describe as “more, more, more, more.” If I am more successful, I’ll be happier, and people will love me more. I was trying to fill an internal emotional hole with external, material achievements. Ultimately, this kind of obsession is insatiable. The more you get, the more you want, all the time never quite scratching the itch. You end up with a mind consumed by what it doesn’t have and what it didn’t get, and in a spiraling inability to enjoy what it has. I Am Legend had opened to the biggest December opening ever. When JL called to give me the weekend grosses, he was uncharacteristically ecstatic. “The three-day was $77,211,321 in 3,600 theaters. That’s over $21,000 per venue. Nobody’s ever done that, ever.” I was quiet for a moment and then I recognized a subtle dissatisfaction. “Why do you think we missed eighty?” I asked. “What?” JL said. “I’m sayin’, do you think it was the ending? I feel like if we had made the adjustment to the final moment, you know, if we could have made it feel more like Gladiator at the end ….” “Are you fuckin’ serious ...