Sometimes art and real life intersect in ways that are profound and mysterious, which Will Smith says is the case with his latest film, “Collateral Damage”, which wound up resonating more deeply than he anticipated after the death of his father, William Carroll Smith, last month.
“This has been one of the greatest confluences of life and art that I’ve ever experienced,” Smith tells People of his new film, in which he plays a high-flying advertising exec whose world is shattered by the tragic death of his six-year-old daughter.
“Some of the issues that the character is dealing with are so profoundly perfectly timed for what I was experiencing in my life,” he says. “It was just a fantastic opportunity to grow as an actor while I was growing as a man.”
In, the film’s title came to have a deeper meaning to the two-time Oscar nominee, admitting he’s come to understand the “collateral beauty” that that can accompany grief. “I think more than ever I see — and intellectually I’ve accepted [but] it’s still difficult emotionally — I understand that suffering is how we grow,” he reveals.
“Even in my life with Jada, like I’m a hopeless romantic, but romance is not love,” he adds. “That’s not what love is. That fluffy, fancy, pretty stuff is actually anti-love. It keeps you away from love. Love is really born of surviving with somebody.”
