Spotlight On: Will Smith

Will Smith has been many things -- rap star, TV actor, Academy Award nominee. What he hasn’t been is predictable. In the new drama ‘Concussion’ he plays the real-life doctor who blew the whistle on the effects of head trauma on football players. Here’s a look at some of his other notable screen roles, from early to present day. 

Smith and Martin Lawrence star as buddy cops in Michael Bay’s action-comedy that resulted in big box office and two sequels, one of which is currently in development.

Also known as the big action-annihilation film that blew up the White House, this movie relies on Will Smith to save the world from imminent disaster at the hands -- and tentacles -- of otherworldly aliens.

Another huge blockbuster franchise hit for Smith, this one costars the ever-cool Tommy Lee Jones -- and more aliens – as the two play secret government officials tasked with policing the planet’s extraterrestrial population.

Smith had another action-thriller on his hands, this time playing a lawyer whose life gets turned upside down when he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. With an incriminating video in his possession, he becomes the target of a lethal team of NSA surveillance operatives.

He moved like a butterfly and stung like a bee, taking on the role of the great heavyweight boxer Muhammed Ali. The performance was a knockout for Smith, landing him an Academy Award nomination amongst other accolades.

In this dystopian sci-fi film loosely based on an Isaac Asimov short story, Smith plays a police detective who’s wary of technology… and creepy blank-faced rogue robots that kill.

Smith plays a professional dating consultant who takes the poor, schlubby, unlucky-in-love Kevin James under his wing, helping him win the heart of the gorgeous Amber Valleta. What’s the hitch, so to speak? Smith’s girlfriend, played by Eva Mendes, is none too happy to discover his true profession.

Starring alongside his real-life son Jayden Smith, Will Smith plays Christopher Gardner in the true story of a San Francisco salesman struggling to build a future for himself and his son after his girlfriend walks out.

This movie, adapted from the same novel that Charleton Heston’s ‘The Omega Man’ (1971) was based, stars Smith as a virologist in a postapocalyptic, plague-ridden world overrun by mutant zombies.

Say what you wanted about this uneven movie, there's no doubt a lot of creativity went into Smith's character, a dubious, mostly drunk, typically homeless superhero dealing with issues relating to his not wanting to be one in the first place.   

Agent J is as charming as we remembered him from a decade before, this time playing off a terrific Josh Brolin as young Agent K whose alien enemy seeks to exact revenge and take over planet Earth.

Little is known yet about this hotly anticipated superhero flick that brings your favorite villains together, but we do know that Smith plays Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot. Deadshot is an assassin with incredibly aim who lives in morally gray territory; in the comics, he killed people to support his daughter.