Will Smith reveals a dark aspect of his childhood when opening up about his abusive father in a recent memoir.

By: Natalie Shomali, Staff Reporter, The Pawprint

Famous American actor Will Smith expressed his experiences with his father’s abuse in his new memoir, “Will,” out on November 9th. 

He includes a story of a moment in his upbringing when he was nine-years-old. He witnessed his father punch his mother in the head, causing her to collapse.  

“I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am,” Smith wrote.

He also added his promise to himself as a child that he would avenge his mother, when he was grown up and “no longer a coward.”

Smith opened up about his dark thoughts against his father. He said that he found himself stopping on top of stairs as he took his father to the bathroom and thinking, “I could shove him down, and easily get away with it. As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom.”

Besides this, Smith cared for his father while he was sick, but admits that the past incidents continued to haunt him through. 

“The same intense perfectionism that terrorized his family put food on the table every night of my life,” he said to the People magazine.

Smith’s father, Willard Carroll Smith Sr, passed away in 2016, around 16 years after the divorce with his mother, Caroline.