It's funny that people think I've saved the world and yet everybody's dead. 
Will Smith is currently one of the hottest stars on the planet thanks to a string of critical and commercial hits stretching back to Six Degrees of Separation and Bad Boys. He's also prone to saving the world a lot in movies such as Independence Day, Men In Black and I, Robot. In between, he's even attracted two Oscar nominations for acclaimed roles in Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. I Am Legend, his latest, finds Will as the last man on earth (well, almost) and has already set a new record in America for the highest grossing December opening of all time.
You've just enjoyed the biggest opening ever for a December movie in the US. Do you feel any pressure leading up to the release of a film like this or is it all a thrill?
There was definitely pressure this time. I think that the combination of the amount of work we put into this film and the way that we decided to do it - we essentially employed a different spirit behind making this film that you usually don't have in film-making. We all took artistic leaps when making this film. But then there was the added element of it just being me on camera for the first hour of the film. I took it that if this film was rejected, people were actually rejecting me more than not liking a film. So it was a huge relief for me on Sunday night when we got the numbers.
How much inspiration did you draw from the other movies [The Omega Man and The Last Man On Earth]?
We looked at it as sort of a combination of the source material and Omega Man. We felt that all the previous incarnations of the film were genre - they were specific to action or specific to horror. What we were trying to do was to completely remove genre; so let's look at the psychological deterioration of the character and let's make the small art film version of this movie and then put all of the other elements - the blockbuster packaging - around it. We were just very specific to never say that to anybody at Warner Bros!
Why relocate the story from LA to New York?
A city can change what the story is when you're reading a script. It really depends on the energy that you're trying to capture and what you're trying to say. New York empty is as haunting an image as you can imagine. You don't realise that you have never actually seen a New York street empty and I think Francis [Lawrence] does a brilliant job with the first five or six images that start the film. I've seen the film now on three continents and in five different languages and the second those images appear, the audience just goes dead silent. There's something about the iconic images of New York being deserted that immediately jolts you into the film. So I think that it was a wise decision that [writer] Akiva [Goldsman] made. New York was perfect for this film and I cannot imagine where else you'd do it. It almost seems like Los Angeles could have ruined what was created. I don't even know where you would get that feeling in Los Angeles.
How did you prepare for tackling the scenes of isolation and getting into the right frame of mind?
As an actor you always look for the in to the character - what is the thing that makes it click in your mind? We did research with people that had been in solitary confinement and the two things that came out were that everything has to be scheduled. Even if it's, 'I'm going to clean my nails from 9 to 9.45, and then from 9.45 to 10.30 I'm going to look at the ceiling'. You actually go through and you create the schedule. The big thing for me was that you give life to everything. Anything that's around you, you give life to - even if it's a glass. Your mind, in order to defend itself, starts to give life to inanimate objects. When that happens it solves the problem of stimulus and response because literally if you're by yourself you lose the element of stimulus and response.
Somebody asks a question, you give a response; somebody pushes you, you punch them in the nose - or "hey man, that's not right, don't do that". So, when you lose the stimulus and response, what I connected to is that you actually create all the stimulus and response. I had pages of written dialogue that was going on in my head that would give life in the scene. I would hear a glass ask me: "What time is it?" So, what happens in the scene when the glass asks you what time it is, I would have to respond to myself: "Don't respond, don't tell it what time it is, you know it's a glass, don't listen to him." It's just silence on screen but it gives all of these weird machinations and these little things life in the scene. It was working out to about two pages of internal stuff per scene but it kept giving wonderful, wonderful outbursts.
This is the fifth time you've saved the world. What about those kinds of roles appeals to you?
Well it's funny that people think I've saved the world and yet everybody's dead [laughs]. On this occasion, Robert Neville failed miserably! As far as my attraction to these kind of roles... Star Wars just really spun me out as a child. I couldn't believe that someone created that. It's like: "Where do you even pull Jabba The Hut from? Where does that even come from?" So I've always been inspired... I love science fiction movies and I've been chasing Star Wars my entire career.
You obviously have to keep in shape for these kind of roles. But do you secretly long to let the belly go?
I feel like everything in your life begins with physical conditioning. I love eating sweets and stuff like that but I feel like the quality of my parenting is based on my physical conditioning; the quality of my relationship with my wife, the quality of all the interactions I have in my life start with being in great physical condition. Akiva and I were just talking today about how doing a junket is actually a physical, athletic event. In the past 11 days, we've flown to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York, London, Madrid, Paris, London... so, to me, you can't do that if you're not in good physical condition. I just believe that it's the beginning of finding the happiness and the things that I desire in my life. But also when the ladies go "woohoooo", that turns me on a little bit! I like that [laughs].
With The Pursuit of Happyness and I Am Legend you seem to be moving away from comedy. Are you actively looking for roles outside of your comfort zone? And what's happening with the music, is that on the backburner for now?
I'm absolutely looking for things that are different. I feel that I've been successful with films that are territory that I can't return to. I feel like the success of Men In Black was based on that time and my age at that point. I feel that if I don't advance and expand that people will reject the work that I do. I've also gotten intrigued with the idea and the relationship of trauma and story - the trauma as the beginning of all of our existence. As we all sit here, we are who we are... we can all think back to that one thing that happened that developed a big section of who we are. Akiva and I have been talking about that for the past two years and it has exploded in my mind as a beautiful way to start designing characters and designing stories around a central trauma. So, it leads slightly to a more dramatic type of film. Another film that Akiva and I have been working on comes out in July next year called Hancock and it's about an alcoholic superhero. It's sort of a dark comedy but it takes that same idea and starts with a trauma and builds the story and the character out of trauma. I probably won't create any new music but I will be on tour with my old music... not my old music, my classic songs next year!
I Am Legend opens in UK cinemas on 26th December 2007.
