Will Smith is still a pretty big movie star today, but there was a time in the late ‘90s that he was quite possibly the biggest movie star in the world. This was, at least in part, because becoming a movie star was exactly Smith’s goal, and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who taught him how to do it.
In a clip from the documentary film, Number One on the Call Sheet, available this week with an Apple TV+ subscription, that has been posted to Instagram, Smith tells a story which he’s mentioned before about attending a Planet Hollywood opening in the early 1990s. He had a chance to talk to three movie star shareholders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone. Smith said…
I walked into a room, you know, [in] 1990 [or] 1991, something like that. Fresh Prince was just on, just getting started. So it was Arnold, Bruce, and Sly, and I walked up to them, and I was like, ‘Hey, look, I don’t mean to interrupt y’all, but I wanna do what y’all do. What’s the secret? I know you know something that other people don’t know. And Arnold said, ‘If you want to be a movie star, you’ll never be a movie star if your movies are only successful in America. Your movies must be successful everywhere on Earth.’
It may seem like an obvious statement, that being a big movie star means being a star outside of the U.S., but there are plenty of stars that are loved domestically that aren’t nearly as big elsewhere in the world. A star at the level of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise or yes, Will Smith, is something of a rarity.
But there’s also a more practical reason that being a big star all over the world is important. Being so acclaimed in other countries means a better chance for box office success globally. This means movies can still be a hit even if they don’t become smash hits in North America. Smith continued…
And I was like, [gasps]. Box office-wise, if you’re big enough around the globe, you can flop a movie in America and still make the studio’s money back in Europe, Japan. When Russia opened up, we did one of the first premieres in Russia. So the idea of global success, the number one everywhere on Earth was how I was measuring success.
It’s not too difficult to see exactly this idea in action in Will Smith’s own career. While all the Men in Black movies are among the highest-grossing films of the actor’s career, it’s worth noting that each film made less money than the preceding one at the domestic box office. However, the sequels did much better overseas. Men in Black 3 was the lowest-grossing movie in the franchise domestically, but the highest-grossing internationally, making it actually the highest-grossing movie in the series worldwide.
Whether or not Will Smith ever returns to the heights of his previous stardom, the man clearly understands how to be a movie star.