Will Smith Was Once Told He Needed to Knock Someone out to Impress His Lover

When Will Smith was on the dating scene, he was open to advice on how to impress his potential girlfriends and lovers. There was one piece of violent advice he was given the actor was surprised proved effective.

Will Smith was told the best way to land women was to resort to violence

Smith has been very candid about his dating experiences in the past. Many of the women in his life shaped Smith into being the megastar that he is today. As a teenager, a nasty break-up partially drove the actor to be as successful as he became.

“When I was 15 years old, my first girlfriend cheated on me,” Smith once told The Hollywood Reporter. “And I remember making a decision that nobody would ever cheat on me again. And the way I was gonna do that was by being the biggest actor on Earth.”

In a BBC interview, Smith further opened up on some of the women he’s dated prior to stardom. He even shared some of the worst advice he’d been given in regards to dating women.

“It was from a friend of mine – his name is Charlie Mack. He’s like my ghetto co-ordinator from back in Philly and he said, ‘No, no, no! Whatcha gotta understand man, is that women want a dude that can do anything, so what you wanna do is make ’em laugh. If you wanna make ’em laugh and then they need to see you, like, knock somebody the f*** out,’” Smith remembered.

As bad as the advice was, Smith quipped that it wasn’t completely useless.

“He says, ‘Generally on first dates that’s what I do, you know? Going the whole night it’s funny, funny, funny, then I just go outside and just knock somebody the f*** out ’cause they need to feel safe! Women need to feel safe when they with you,’” Smith recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Cool…’ But listen. It works. I mean it’s the worst most horrible advice I’ve ever heard, but when women see him knock somebody out they do really say, ‘Ooh, Charlie!’”

Will Smith said that dating Jada Pinkett Smith went ‘perfectly wrong’

Smith thought he’d finally found the partner he was looking for this whole time in Jada Pinkett. He fancied the Gotham star since he first laid eyes on her in the sitcom A Different World.

“I knew there was something in our energy that would be magic,” Smith wrote in his memoir Will.

He didn’t act on his attraction because he was married to Sheree Zampino at the time. After their divorce, however, Smith and Pinkett Smith would explore their feelings for one another. Even though their dates didn’t go as planned, Smith still felt that was better than if everything went right during their nights out.

“It was one of those things where everything went perfectly – not perfectly in the sense of smooth and lovely – but everything that went wrong went perfectly wrong,” Smith said. “In the beginning of our relationship everything that needed to go wrong went wrong very quickly. We learned early on who we were and who we wanted to be and decided on a path to get there. Normally at the beginning of relationship it’s all flowers and butterflies but we didn’t have that. I was coming out of a divorce and she was coming out of a bad relationship and there was just no time for bull***. It was just blatant, hard, cold honesty and that’s the basis of our relationship: harsh honesty.”

Why Will Smith had a difficult time growing up with women

In his formative years, Smith didn’t have the physique he was known for sporting in action movies. He admitted to feeling a bit disproportionate when he was younger, which affected his interaction with women and his confidence. This changed only slightly as Smith grew more into his body.

“Goofy was the word that was used most often by my sisters because I’ve been this tall ever since I was 12 years old,” he said. “It was difficult being this tall and about half of the weight that I am now, you know? So I had that for a lot of years and as I started to fill out I gained a little more confidence. It was a difficult time growing up with women because I was hurt, you know? I was hurt.”