Jaden Smith was once a promising actor, but something happened on his rise to fame to cause him to disappear from the spotlight. While children of Hollywood stars often find it difficult to step out of the shadows cast by their famous folks, Jaden has been doing everything in his power to create his very own shadow since the moment he was old enough to perform. But as Jaden grew from a young boy to a young man, his relationship with Hollywood began to sour. The early box office promise he'd shown all but vanished, and the actor/rapper/philosopher has been distancing himself from Hollywood ever since...
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00:00Jaden Smith was once a promising actor,
00:02but something happened on his rise to fame to cause him to disappear from the spotlight.
00:07While children of Hollywood stars often find it difficult to step out of the shadows cast
00:11by their famous folks, Jaden has been doing everything in his power to create his very
00:15own shadow since the moment he was old enough to perform. But as Jaden grew from a young boy
00:19to a young man, his relationship with Hollywood began to sour. The early box office promise he'd
00:25shown all but vanished, and the actor-slash-rapper-slash-philosopher
00:28has been distancing himself from Hollywood ever since.
00:31I miss my dreads, right? But they're still on. Like, spiritually they're there,
00:36and spiritually I can hide behind them, but you just can't see them."
00:41After Earth Aftermath
00:43Even if you've never seen 2013's After Earth, chances are you've heard of it.
00:47The disastrous sci-fi blockbuster starring Will and Jaden Smith as father and son
00:51cost $130 million to make, but only returned $60 million domestically,
00:57and landed an embarrassing 11 percent critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes.
01:01What was I supposed to do? What did you want me to do?"
01:06Will told Esquire,
01:08"[That was the most painful failure in my career. My son was involved in After Earth,
01:12and I led him into it. That was excruciating."
01:15Jaden even won Worst Actor at the Razzies the following year.
01:18And the Worst Actor goes to… Jaden Smith!"
01:24Odd reputation
01:26In 2014, the hacker group Guardians of Peace stole a bunch of sensitive information from
01:30Sony Pictures, and among the hacker's haul were private emails between executives.
01:35Most of the headlines were about big-time stars, but Will Smith's kids also came up
01:39in conversation. According to Us Weekly, TriStar executive Tom Rothman emailed former Sony head
01:44Amy Pascal a link to an interview that the Smith kids did with T Magazine, writing,
01:49"[1. Read this. 2. They are homeschooled. Don't let this family date your movies."
01:54In the TMAG interview, Jaden theorized,
01:56"[Your mind has a duality to it, so when one thought goes into your mind,
02:00it's not just one thought. It has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain.
02:03When you're thinking about something happy, you're thinking about something sad.
02:07When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple."
02:10The youngster then went on to claim he could manipulate time, saying,
02:13"[It's proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe.
02:17It's relative to beings in other places. But on the level of being here on Earth,
02:21if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware,
02:25your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds."
02:29The then-16-year-old Jaden gave a number of unconventional interviews over the next few years,
02:33each one as baffling as the last.
02:35My whole life revolves around educating myself and just learning more,
02:40and educating the people around me so that we can all be happier."
02:45In 2015, he told GQ that he had built his own pyramid from scratch, saying,
02:49"[The tip is missing, but the whole structural thing is built. And it sits at 12.5 feet tall.
02:54I'll Instagram a picture of it once this comes out, so people know what I'm talking about."
02:57The following year, Jaden told Pharrell Williams that nothing is real during
03:01their chat for Interview magazine.
03:02The ones who know, know. But the ones who don't know, just don't believe."
03:07Science over cinema
03:08After the crushing disappointment of After Earth, Jaden's movie career seemed to be over
03:12before it had really even begun. It would be three years before he acted again, and during his time
03:17away, Jaden and his sister became more interested in the pursuit of scientific knowledge than they
03:21were in making movies. He told GQ that he and his sibling had started their own mystery school,
03:26saying,
03:26"[Plato, Pythagoras, all these students had mystery schools,
03:29and what they learned in there was sacred. Like, you couldn't say the word dodecahedron
03:33outside of one of the mystery schools or they would, like, kill you or whatever,
03:37because it was such a sacred shape."
03:38The celeb even compared himself to scientific pioneer Galileo, saying,
03:42"[People think you're crazy. I feel like it's an honor,
03:45actually, for people to think I'm crazy. Because they thought Galileo was crazy, too.
03:49I don't think I'm as revolutionary as Galileo, but I don't think I'm not as revolutionary as Galileo."
03:54Strawberries aren't berries, but bananas are, and so are watermelons and avocados."
04:00How?
04:01Under critical review
04:03Jaden once referred to himself as, quote,
04:04"...the future of music, photography, and filmmaking,"
04:07a claim that angered a number of journalists in these fields.
04:10For the New York Post, Kyle Smith wrote of the star,
04:12"[Jaden's primary activity these days seems to be trying to be the Black Boy George,
04:16minus the talent."
04:17It wasn't the first time a journalist had suggested that Jaden was all talk and no talent.
04:22The New Yorker wrote of his performance in After Earth,
04:24"[Jaden, though agile and skillful, isn't a charismatic actor.
04:28He doesn't put a lot of personality into the part, and he doesn't have a deft way with the dialogue."
04:32Cinemix Tape was similarly critical of the young star's performance, predicting,
04:36"[Jaden would do well to bottle some of his dad's charisma for his next go-round.
04:40If he wants a career in film, he'll need to do better than this."
04:44No support in L.A.
04:46After failing his driving test in 2017, Jaden took to Instagram to share his
04:50disappointment with fans. But his thoughts quickly turned from driving to life in Hollywood.
04:55I'm about to move out of L.A. because there's nobody here that's really, like,
04:59supporting the youth or the youth's creativity and the things that they want to do."
05:04A few months later, Jaden moved out of his parents', quote,
05:06"'compound' and into a $4 million estate in the quiet, gated community of Hidden Hills,
05:11California, which reportedly stopped being so quiet after his arrival."
05:14One resident told Daily Mail,
05:16This was a quiet neighborhood, but Jaden and his entourage are turning it into their own personal
05:20kingdom. He has a sense of entitlement. He doesn't care if security reprimands him or
05:24gives him a warning. He just continues to do whatever he pleases.
05:29Netflix and fail
05:31Not long after he moved into his $4 million pad, Jaden received word that Netflix was pulling the
05:35plug on the get-down after just 11 episodes. He'd played graffiti artist Marcus Dizzy Kipling on
05:40the show, which was created by Baz Luhrmann at the eye-watering cost of $190 million.
05:45I see a light in the darkness, yeah!"
05:49But luckily for Jaden, he had another project lined up with Netflix.
05:54An anime trainwreck
05:56While some of Netflix's original anime series have been getting rave reviews,
05:59others haven't been received quite as warmly.
06:02Knock knock, it's me, Kaz. I brought you a big Toblerone.
06:06Created by Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, 2017's Neo Yokio stars Jaden as a
06:11vain magistocrat who spends his days socializing and his nights hunting demons.
06:15Fashion is not a commodity.
06:17Oh yeah? What is it then?
06:19It's a glimmer of hope in a cruel world.
06:22Polygon reported the show's real fault was in the writing, with the review,
06:25"'Kaz' is an easy character to hate because he's based entirely on Jaden's Twitter persona.
06:29His philosophical statements are eye-roll-inducing and every moment of
06:32exaggerated teenage angst results in you muttering, give me a break under your breath."
06:36Geek.com called Neo Yokio a, quote,
06:38"...mesmerizing trainwreck and a glorious failure."
06:42All about the music
06:44Jaden has announced new musical projects on several occasions,
06:47but he never seems to go through with them.
06:49In 2016, he tweeted that he wanted to become a K-pop star,
06:52and even though he confirmed he'd be dropping a K-pop single, the track never materialized.
06:56In April 2017, he said that he, his sister, and his girlfriend, Odessa Adlon,
07:01were starting a rock band together, even posting a preview of a track.
07:07But nothing ever came of that, either.
07:09Then, in November 2017, Jaden finally dropped the album he'd been working on all these years.
07:14He goes, how long has he been working on this damn song?
07:16The 17-track Sire, A Beautiful Confusion, received mixed reviews from critics,
07:20but those who didn't like it really didn't like it.
07:23Pitchfork called Sire a paranoid fantasy that mixes New Age thinking with apocalyptic rhetoric.
07:28It would be generous to call this kind of songcraft scatterbrained.
07:31Jaden finally revealed his true intention for Sire, telling Vanity Fair,
07:35I want that vibe to come across so that people can say,
07:37hey, everybody isn't always happy 24-7, because people like to think,
07:42oh there are certain people in the world that just have it all and they have perfect lives.
07:45But that's just so not true.
07:47And this is a big shine on that.
07:49It's like, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun,
07:53dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.
07:54That's exactly what it sounds like.
07:57Can he turn it around?
07:58Jaden has been quietly re-establishing himself as an actor over the years,
08:02securing low-key roles in two feature films in 2018, Skate Kitchen and Life in a Year,
08:07and he plans to tour North America promoting his album in early 2018.
08:11The rapper also intends to release a deluxe acapella edition of Sire in 2018
08:15and to also drop its follow-up, Heiress, before the end of the year.
08:19So, while he might not have been cut out for a career in Hollywood,
08:21don't expect Jaden Smith to go quietly — or to stop sharing his genius.
08:2650% of human DNA is shared with a banana. Unbelievable.