Will Smith on finding fame, ‘nobody in my family was happy’

Will Smith stated that "nobody in [his] family was happy" after his family's meteoric rise to global fame in 2010.

The Oscar-winner, 54, became a household name after landing the starring role in NBC's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990 to 1996.

Decades later, his two daughters, Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22, whom he shares with wife Jada Pinkett Smith, followed in his and Jada's footsteps in the entertainment world.

On the season three conclusion of Kevin Hart's Peacock TV show Hart to Heart, the Men in Black actor stated that 2010 was "the greatest year as an artist, as a parent."

"Karate Kid came out in June, Whip My Hair came out in October,” Smith remarked of his kid’s career accomplishments.

“I’m building this dream of a family I’ve had in my mind. ‘I’m going to do it better than my father did it.’ We’ve talked about it, my father was abusive.”

“I told myself I would never have that kind of energy with my family and I had a dream, an idea of a family I was building. Pretty much 2010 to 2012 I had achieved everything I had ever dreamed,” Smith told the comedian.

Despite his family's considerable prosperity that year, the actor claimed that "nobody in my family was happy."

“No one wanted to be in a platoon,” he shared. “Willow was the first one to begin the mutiny and it was my first realization that success and money don’t mean happiness.”

“Up until that point, I really believed that you could succeed your way — to a house and a family — and you could win your way to happiness,” he added.

The King Richard actor said it was at that point he realized that the “material circumstances do not equal happiness and, in a lot of cases, they can be the reason you’re not happy.”

“You can have so much stuff that it makes you miserable,” he said. “That was my first pull-back and I was like, ‘OK, what am I missing?’ I was driving the people around me in a way that I was leaving scorched earth around me.”

Smith also has a 30-year-old son, Trey, with his ex-wife Sheree Zampino, with whom he was married from 1992 to 1995.