The film Will Smith calls “a thorn in my side”
Actor Will Smith is certainly not the greatest actor of all time, although a few of his performances have undoubtedly caught the eye over the years. For playing Muhammed Ali in the 2002 biopic Ali, as well as his role in The Pursuit of Happiness, Smith was nominated for a ‘Best Actor’ Academy Award, a recognition he finally won last year for King Richard.
However, it’s fair to say that Smith has been in some particularly awful offerings throughout his career, and when it comes to the worst of a bad bunch, there is one film in particular that just seems to rub the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air up the wrong way. It’s unequivocally Wild Wild West.
Smith had been responding to a fan question in a feature with GQ, in which they wondered what film from Smith’s credits did he consider his worst. He replied, “Wild Wild West is just a thorn in my side. To see myself with chaps… I don’t like it.” Funnily enough, the producer of the video claimed that he loved the film, to which Smith just chuckled.
Wild Wild West is the 1999 steampunk-western action-comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, loosely based on the 1960s TV series The Wild Wild West. Smith had, of course, worked with Sonnenfeld just two years prior to the film Men in Black and teamed up with the director once again alongside Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek and Ted Levine.
Smith and Kline played two United States Secret Service agents tasked with protecting the United States President Ulysses S. Grant (also played by Kline in a dual role) from several threats and dangers in the old American west. The film was a commercial disaster and fared little better with the critics.
Smith’s previous effort with Sonnenfeld, Men in Black, though, garnered much higher praise from the box office, the critics, and even Smith himself. When asked in the video what his best acting work came in, he replied, “For the best, I think it is a tie between the first Men in Black and The Pursuit of Happiness.”
“For different reasons, those are the two almost perfect movies,” Smith added. Men in Black is, of course, the beloved sci-fi action-comedy, while The Pursuit of Happiness saw Smith play a more dramatic role as a struggling scientific entrepreneur father who comes very close to becoming homeless while finding it difficult to look after his young son.
