NEW YORK (AP) – Will Smith had already begun researching his role for “Collateral Beauty” when he learned that his father was terminally ill.
Smith said at the film’s world premiere in New York on Monday that he had to channel the emotions of that tragic news into a demanding film role. Smith’s father, Willard Carroll Smith Jr., died on Nov. 7.
“My father was diagnosed and given six weeks, so you know, to be hit with that in the process and then what we decided to do was just use the preparation of the character to actually deal with what my father was experiencing,” Smith said. “It became our way of saying goodbye, essentially. It was a really beautiful confluence of art and life.”
Smith stars in the film as a father who suffers a great tragedy and begins to question the point of existence.
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