Will Smith more ‘fearful’ now

Will Smith thinks he’s got “more fearful” as he’s got older and wants to harness the courage of his younger years.
Will Smith thinks he’s got “more fearful” as he’s got older.

The 51-year-old actor has been trying to “recover” the more carefree attitude he held in his 20s, and would like to connect with his younger self to discover where his “courage” came from, even though he admitted he was a bit of a “dumbass” in those days.

Asked what he’d ask his younger self, he said: “Will in his twenties wasn’t listening to nothing that nobody had to say, so I wouldn’t tell his dumbass nothing.

“But there were certain qualities that I had in my twenties that I have been trying to recover in the last couple of years.

“So my birthday last year, I did bungee jumping out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon.

“And even a part of that foolishness was trying to get rid of the fear that I had taken on as I become more successful. I didn’t become more brave. I became more fearful as I got older.

“So young Will was wildly courageous to the level of foolishness.

“But I would want to ask my younger self about the source of that courage because I’ve actually lost touch with that source. I have to manipulate it a little bit more than I used to.”

Will can next be seen in ‘Gemini Man’ where he plays an elite assassin who comes up against a cloned version of his 23-year-old and he found it “crazy” seeing how technology had created his younger self, and “really weird” to watch the scenes.

He told ‘Entertainment Tonight’: “That was crazy. We had to shoot all of this stuff ahead of time and it was eight months before I got to see an image. And it’s really weird when you see yourself talking to yourself… 

“The first shot I saw is one of the best shots in the movie, the one where the old Will flips the young Will and then puts the flashlight on his face and it’s the first time we see him, and it’s just one of those shots that’s exquisitely done.”

Will stressed he hasn’t been “de-aged” for the movie but was still “blown away” when he saw his digital likeness.

He said: “It’s a hundred percent digital character and that’s the thing that I keep repeating to people, it’s not me de-aged.

“It’s a 100 percent digital character. They created that character totally in the computer. It’s essentially a digital avatar that I put the things on and I’m working an avatar so the process of it was a difficult process because you don’t really see anything, but when I first saw it…blown away.”