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Will Smith: Fresh Prince
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Will Smith was the second of four children of Caroline (school board employee) and Willard C Smith Sr. (owner of a refrigeration company). He grew up in middle class area in West Philadelphia called Wynnefield. Will attended the Overbrook High School located in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He got the nickname 'Prince' because of the way he could charm his way out of trouble. Bright student Will ... signed up with the high-status Julia Reynolds Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia.
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Before Will Smith was one of the most popular, highest paid movie stars in Hollywood, he was a fresh-faced, peppy young rapper. Starting with wacky, fun youth anthems like "Parents Just Don't Understand," Smith became a popular Mtv artist.
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After the success of his hip-hop duo, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Will Smith landed The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a comedy series based on his life. He established himself as a credible actor with 1993's Six Degrees of Separation and as an action hero with the hugely successful Independence Day (1996). Since then he's reeled off one summer hit after another, even surviving the horrible dud Wild Wild West.
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A charismatic African-American rap star and actor of film and TV, Will Smith began as half of the Grammy-winning duo D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and later rose to fame making his acting debut starring as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (NBC, 1991-96), a nice, jug-eared, streetwise kid from the Philadelphia 'hood adjusting to culture shock in moneyed Bel Air. The role allowed him to offer a squeaky clean image of hip-hop culture which proved non-threatening to primetime values....
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The survey found 20 percent of respondents age 18-24 think Will Smith will be more remembered, compared with only 10 percent of those ages 35-54 choosing Smith. There may be more than a nugget of truth in Smith's Grammy-award winning song, "Parents Just Don't Understand," with 20 percent of those over ages 65 answering "don't know." Perhaps that generation remembers "floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee," but doesn't know who the "Fresh Prince" is.
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Will Smith has triumphed in just about every venue in entertainment: from music to television to the big screen. His early success as a rapper led to an extravagant life of spending money and the first Grammy in the rap category in 1989. Will's spending nearly bankrupted him, but his saving grace came in the form of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1990.
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