Willow Smith Is All Grown Up And Her Path To Stardom Hasn't Always Been Easy

This feature discusses mental health issues and self-harm.

In the 1997 movie "Men in Black," Will Smith's character goes in for a job interview to determine if he's the rare human being who can handle dealing with the extraterrestrials hiding in plain sight on planet Earth. From the sounds of it, his daughter, musician Willow Smith, would have responded to this world-shattering revelation enthusiastically. "If there are any extraterrestrials looking at this right now, beam me up because I'm down to meet your leader," she said in a 2021 Glamour interview.

Will and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, celebrated Willow's arrival three years after "Men in Black" hit theaters. When Willow was still a tiny infant, her mom was busy learning kung fu for her role in "The Matrix Reloaded," taking breaks from her training to breastfeed her baby girl. "The one end I cannot slack on is the mothering end," Jada told the Tampa Bay Times in 2001. Her devotion to her daughter would pay off in an unbreakable bond that has survived child stardom and years of negative headlines about the Smith family. When Willow began appearing with her mom on "Red Table Talk," the daughter of The Fresh Prince brought a fresh perspective to the talk show format, and nowadays, Big Willie Style can't compete with Willow's funky fashion choices.

But before Willow became the ever-evolving poster child for self-expression and a wholesome, earnest wokeness that can't be faked, the exemplary Gen Z role model just wanted to do what the rest of her family was doing.

When Will Smith and Jaden Smith appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2006, they were there to talk about sharing the screen in the film "The Pursuit of Happyness." Willow Smith, who was 5 years old then, was invited to join them onstage and instantly charmed Oprah Winfrey and the audience with her review of her brother and dad's work. "I felt like the movie was connected to ... me," she said. Willow then told the host that she wanted to be an actor, too. Reflecting on that moment in a 2022 interview with the Independent, she said, "I was too much ... I wanted to do what they were doing."

Willow would soon land her own first-time role starring alongside her father in the 2007 post-apocalyptic thriller "I Am Legend," in which she played the daughter of Will's character. "She saw what Jaden did, and she was like, 'I want that,'" Will told People about what sparked his daughter's interest in pursuing an acting career.

The proud papa praised Willow's work ethic, recalling how she refused to stop shooting one day when the temperature plummeted far below freezing. However, he didn't believe that she was interested in becoming a serious actor. After comparing Jaden to Johnny Depp, he said of his daughter, "Willow is Paris Hilton; Willow wants to be on TV." Will eventually discovered that he'd vastly underestimated his daughter's talent and her desire to create impactful, individualistic art.

In 2009, Willow Smith made her television debut on the Nickelodeon series "True Jackson, VP." For two episodes, she shared the titular role with Keke Palmer by playing the younger version of True. The show's fashion industry setting appealed to Willow, who said of the role, "I get my style ideas from 'True Jackson, VP.' If I had my own fashion company, I would call it 'Willow's Reign,'" per UPI. But it was Willow's hairstyle, not her clothing, that garnered comparisons to the reigning queen of the celeb style scene at the time: Rihanna.

In December 2009, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert honoring Barack Obama. Willow wasn't yet whipping her hair around when she and her brother, Jaden Smith, closed out the concert by performing the Michael Jackson song "Man in the Mirror" with their parents (above). However, the shaved side of Willow's head sparked an online conversation. The edgy cut was similar to one Rihanna had experimented with, and after some bloggers suggested that Willow was too young to sport the look, the hairstylist responsible for it came to the then-9-year-old's defense. "Willow's a fierce little girl with energy, imagination, and spunk. We wanted to give her a look that represented all of those things," Marcia Hamilton told Essence. "Once I started cutting, Willow actually requested the clippers!" Hamilton also praised Willow for being a young visionary and said that the haircut was Jada-approved.

When Willow Smith encouraged us all to wave our keratin around in the air like we just don't care in 2010, she seemed primed for pop superstardom. Her inescapable earworm "Whip My Hair" peaked at No. 11 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, and its accompanying viral music video was one that merited multiple rewatches, thanks to the many exemplary style moments that Willow served. Dressing like a walking art piece is something that she would regularly do throughout her career, making fierce fashion choices that showcase her fearless personality.

As Willow made the media rounds to promote her debut single, she was often asked about her musical influences. During an appearance on "The Madd Hatta Morning Show," she revealed that she was a huge Billy Idol fan. At the time, she was also listening to music by Jada Pinkett Smith's late friend, Tupac, as well as Eminem, Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga. When asked about being compared to Rihanna, Willow gushed, "I would love to be a baby Rihanna."

The young star's instant success earned her an offer to open for Justin Bieber in England and a record contract with Jay-Z's Roc Nation label. Hov himself compared the then-9-year-old to a young Michael Jackson during an "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" interview. "When you have that sort of talent and you have that sort of vision, there's no such thing as too young," he said.

In 2010, Willow Smith told MTV News, "'Whip My Hair' means don't be afraid to be yourself and don't let anybody tell you that that's wrong. Because the best thing is you." The preternaturally talented tween took her own words to heart in 2012 when she shaved her head.

By then, Willow had dropped the single "21st Century Girl;" collaborated with Nicki Minaj; and received an invite to perform at the White House during the 2011 Easter Egg Roll. When Willow debuted her bold new look on her WhoSay account, she appeared as confident as ever. But she later revealed that she decided to make the drastic change for a sad reason — the expectations and obligations that were thrust on her after the success of "Whip My Hair" had become too much. As she explained to The Guardian, it was her way of exercising some autonomy. "I can't be the 'Whip My Hair' girl if I don't have any hair," she pointed out to Spin. 

In his memoir, "Will," Willow's father revealed that although her new look was shocking to him, he also recognized its significance. Will Smith had been pushing her to keep touring and to record her debut album, ignoring her declaration that she was done. But he received her message loud and clear and viewed Willow's new 'do as a teachable moment. "She can't cut my hair but that's her hair. She has got to have command of her body," he told Parade in 2012.

In 2011, it was announced that Willow Smith was going to further capitalize on her sudden fame by playing the title role in the 2014 "Annie" movie remake, the producers of which included her parents and Jay-Z. But in January 2013, the musical was still in the pre-production phase when Deadline reported that Willow had aged out of the lead role. 

The following month, Will Smith shared the real reason Willow dropped out of the movie: She was feeling burned out after her first experience touring. While speaking at Philadelphia's Temple University, Will recalled trying to convince his daughter to reconsider her decision by name-dropping his producing partner's wife. "I said no, no, no, listen, you'll be in New York with all of your friends and Beyoncé will be there,'" he said, per HipHopWired. "... And she looked at me and said, 'Daddy, I have a better idea, how about I just be 12.'" The role ended up going to Quvenzhané Wallis, who starred alongside Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz.

In a 2014 V Magazine interview, Willow explained her decision in her own words. "I just wanted to chill, and be at home, and decompress, and just find out what I wanna do and where I stand on this planet, with the little tiny place we have," she said. That same year, she told Teen Vogue that she had plenty of material for her first album but wasn't satisfied with much of it.

The world was not prepared to hear the ruminations of the young philosophers in the Smith family in 2014. In an interview with T magazine, Willow Smith and Jaden Smith discussed obscure topics such as quantum theory and prana energy. "Time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that's how I know it doesn't exist," Willow said. She also revealed that she began writing novels and reading them because she couldn't find any published works of fiction that appealed to her. And of her year-long experiment with attending school, she said, "I was, like, 'Oh, now I know why kids are so depressed.'"

The teens were brutally mocked, with Billboard deeming their interview "totally bonkers." Reflecting back on the reaction to putting her true, authentic self out there, Willow told The Guardian in 2022, "What threw people for a loop was that we were Black kids being expressive. Society doesn't see Black children in that way and it was shocking for people."

That same year, Willow also caused a stir by sharing a photo on Instagram of her and 20-year-old actor Moises Arias lounging on a bed together. At the time, she was 13. Willow found the outrage over the innocent photo ridiculous, later saying on "Red Table Talk," "Other celebrities, females who aren't Black, who are younger, and who do post things that are way more sexual than that, they don't get any backlash."

Willow Smith didn't drop her debut album until 2015. But when it finally came, outlets such as Fast Company praised the meditative "Ardipithecus" for being a true passion project that was a far cry from the slickly produced bop that made her an instant superstar. Willow later explained that one reason for the record's delay was that she went through a dark time after "Whip My Hair" launched her into the stratosphere of pop stardom. There were some hints of this in her 2013 track "Sugar and Spice." It sampled the Radiohead song "Codex" and included the lyric, "They want to puncture me and then wonder why I bleed?"

In a 2018 episode of "Red Table Talk," Willow shocked her mother by revealing that she began self-harming at some point before her album's release. "I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself," she said. Willow explained that she was struggling with self-identity issues and emotional turmoil after fighting the pressure to ride the wave of her "Whip My Hair" success.

Thankfully, Willow eventually made peace with that difficult early chapter in her young life by deciding that she was going to control her own narrative. "I stopped trying to find myself in these other inanimate objects, people, and ideas. I realized it isn't about finding yourself — it's about creating yourself," she told Teen Vogue.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

In 2015, The Society agency recognized Willow Smith's status as a trend-setting style star by offering her a modeling contract. The following year, the then-15-year-old landed a gig as a Chanel ambassador, modeling eyewear in her first campaign for the luxury fashion house. Willow had previously posed for Chanel's late creative director, Karl Lagerfeld, for her 2014 V Magazine pictorial, and he paid her a pretty big compliment by asking her to raid her own closet for the shoot.

In a 2016 Dazed interview, Willow shared what she hoped to achieve as a Chanel ambassador, and her goals extended far beyond simply looking good and helping the brand sell its designs. "I just feel like I need to give love and confidence to Black girls who don't feel like they're beautiful, and [to tell them] that it doesn't matter what society has pinned you as because you are a being that can't be pinned," she said. "Who you are as an individual — that can never be categorized, it's always going to be infinitely beautiful and divine." She also marveled that Chanel had chosen a young Black woman with dreadlocks for an ambassadorship, a move that she believed would help shift people's perceptions of beauty.

Willow told W magazine that her biggest style inspiration is another trailblazer: her mom, Jada Pinkett Smith. Specifically, she loves the looks that Jada rocked back when she was rocking out with her nu metal band, Wicked Wisdom, at Ozzfest.

In an alternate universe (a concept she surely believes in), Willow Smith might be a physicist or engineer. "I studied physics intimately for three or four years," she told The Guardian. While speaking to Teen Vogue about her passion for the STEM fields in 2016, she said that she'd love to attend MIT. But at that time, she had to settle for organizing meetings with others who shared her interest in quantum mechanics. She also revealed that she was ahead of her time in researching a method to create songs that don't come from her own mind, but her aim was to use math equations, not AI, to make music.

In a 2016 personal essay written for CR Fashion Book, Willow revealed that her songwriting process used to involve allowing her stream of consciousness to flow from her lips unfiltered in the recording booth. "But lately I've been writing songs outside of the studio and then recording," she wrote. "Mindless creation can be a form of meditation, but there is an intense power in flowing your energy in a certain direction with intent."

Willow is also a fan of the spiritual practice of meditating, and she explained that quantum physics can provide a similar mental solace. "It makes my heart sing when I can calculate or start to feel just how much the gravitational force of my body's mass [is] pulling on my best friend, who is in San Francisco — and vice versa," she said.

When Willow Smith released her second album, "The 1st," in 2017, Pitchfork praised the then-17-year-old's reinvention as a soul-rock artist. Her decision to embrace string instruments paid off, as their pure, resonant sounds were well-suited for her style. Speaking to Vulture, Smith revealed that she had learned to play guitar, and gaining this useful skill had influenced the entire record.

Smith admitted that she had paid no heed to her parents' pleas for her to learn how to play an instrument when she was a young child, which she regretted. "The thing that really pushed me to start playing guitar was Michael Cera's album 'True That.' It's so insane," she said. Smith tried taking guitar lessons from a few different teachers before deciding that she would just teach herself. "But then a person came into my life who was just ... it was meant to be. Now, they teach me," she said.

As far as her musical inspirations for "The 1st" were concerned, Smith told Rolling Stone that she's a big fan of Alanis Morissette. Her interviewer observed that her song "Human Leech" is an anthem in which she releases some righteous anger, something that the Canadian singer-songwriter is known for doing in her music. "That song was me looking into myself and realizing my tendencies to latch on to somebody and suck their energy," Smith explained. "That anger that you're hearing is me being angry at myself."

Willow Smith's career took another surprising turn in 2018 when she joined her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, and grandmother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, as a co-host of the Facebook Watch talk show "Red Table Talk." The women did not abstain from mining their own personal experiences when discussing the topic of the day; in fact, many of the show's biggest revelations were about their own lives.

The women were also totally comfortable talking about potentially awkward subjects, such as sex. In one episode, Willow revealed that she's not interested in being in a monogamous relationship, which Jada was unfazed by. However, she was shocked when Willow told her, "My introduction to sex was obviously walking in on you and daddy." Willow didn't seem especially traumatized by the incident, saying that she simply wrote it off at the time as something she wasn't supposed to witness. "I was like, 'Lord have mercy, what did you see? Thank God I have some therapy fund put aside for you,'" Jada later quipped to Vulture.

In another episode that aired during the show's first year, Willow shared her feelings about how Will Smith treated her after the success of "Whip My Hair." She said of his behavior, "He was so harsh at certain times." When Will himself appeared on "Red Table Talk," he admitted that Willow shaving her head made him realize that he had messed up. "I was building what I wanted for her," he confessed.

In a 2019 episode of "Red Table Talk," Willow Smith came out as queer, saying, "I love men and women equally, and so I would definitely want one man, one woman. I feel like I could be polyfidelitous with those two people." However, she revealed that she doesn't find the idea of being in a quad appealing. 

That same year, Willow released her eponymous third album, which featured a mellow R&B sound with a psychedelic flavor. It was co-produced by Tyler Cole (above), one of the members of Willow and Jaden Smith's collective of creators, MSFTSrep. "I usually have no help in the creative process, so that was such a new, awesome experience for me," Willow told Billboard. She was rumored to be dating Cole at the time, with Hollywood Life even publishing a photo of the pair kissing.

In its review of "Willow," Pitchfork suggested that Cole heavily influenced Willow's new music and that the record seemed to lack much of a personal touch. However, Willow told Billboard, "This is the first album that I feel like is truly 100% me." "Willow" also featured a collab with Willow's brother titled "U Know." She and Jaden proved that their sibling bond was as strong as ever when they announced that they would be bringing their two different musical styles together again by co-headlining "The Willow & Erys Tour" in North America.

Willow Smith told the Independent that her "Whip My Hair" fame was followed by a long struggle with anxiety. "I was brainwashed into thinking, 'No, you're being a brat, suck it up.' Then I grew up, and I realized it was something that needed to be dealt with," she said. One action she took was to channel her feelings into her art. In 2020, she and Tyler Cole spent 24 hours locked inside a large box at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary, where they acted out different stages of anxiety using paint, props, words, and movement. Willow's hair was shaved off again as part of the performance. "It was almost like I wanted to personify a new beginning," she told Spin of the follicular full-circle moment. "If you've ever struggled with anxiety, it's almost like layers and layers and layers of unresolved trauma." The exploration of Smith's mental health journey also served as a way to promote her and Cole's joint album, "The Anxiety."

At the beginning of the pandemic, Smith also opened up about her decision to quit smoking weed. "Around the time I stopped smoking, I started doing a lot of yoga, and I just excelled because I was putting all of my energy into that," she said during a "Red Table Talk" conversation. She wasn't lying about excelling at it; throughout 2020, she wowed her Instagram followers by demonstrating some difficult asanas.

In 2020, Willow Smith walked the runway in Rihanna's Fenty x Savage fashion show. Sporting underwear in front of an audience of millions would be a stressful experience for most people who don't model lingerie for a living, but this wasn't the only aspect of the gig that made it nerve-wracking for Smith. On "Red Table Talk," she shared, "I had never worn lingerie in my entire life." But once she gathered up her courage, she strutted down the catwalk with confidence. "I just felt so empowered," she said of the experience.

The following year, some other big risks paid off for Smith. After she decided to record her first pop-punk album, "Lately I Feel Everything," she reached out to Avril Lavigne and Travis Barker and was delighted when they agreed to collaborate with her. Smith wanted to make the album more personal, a decision she expresses in the title of her collab with Barker, "Transparent Soul." In an interview with Nylon, she said of the topics she explores on the record, "I just honestly wanted to talk about being Black and being queer and just what that's like, and being Black and doing rock." But beyond that, Willow's latest genre switch was meant to be inspirational. "I want to tell all the Black and brown young girls that they can scream, they can growl, they can cut their hair, scoop it to the side, dye it," she told NPR. "They can do whatever they want."

For her fifth studio album, "Coping Mechanism," Willow Smith completed her evolution from whipping her hair to producing music that her fans can bang their heads to. She also carried on her mother's rock legacy by recording songs inspired by metal bands such as Lamb of God, Deftones, and System of a Down. Oh, and Korn, which her dog is named after. In an interview with Guitar.com, Willow credited Jada Pinkett Smith for instilling a love of metal in her, saying, "She was the first rock artist that I ever saw perform up close."

As a child, Willow witnessed firsthand the hate that Jada and her nu-metal band, Wicked Wisdom, experienced. "It was intense racism and sexism, just packed on to the tens. People giving her death threats, throwing glass at her onstage," Willow told L'Officiel. Watching her mom brush it off and bravely continue to perform just made her even more of a hero in Willow's eyes.

Her own rockstar status was solidified when Willow punctuated her 2022 "Saturday Night Live" performance of "Ur A Stranger" by smashing her guitar into a TV set. The following year, she rocked out at Coachella and made her proud dad cry. And in what Willow would surely consider a huge compliment, Jada told Nylon, "I look at her and I go, maybe there is such a thing as galactic creatures that are from outer space, just in human skin."