ONLY two years ago he was Hollywood’s most high-profile actor with blockbuster hits from Men In Black to Independence Day, two Oscar nominations and a £12million- a-movie salary.

His films grossed £3.65billion worldwide and his track record eclipsed those of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

And then Will Smith disappeared. His 2008 movie drama Seven Pounds failed to ignite at the box office and a chastened Smith retreated from view.  And it could be another year or two before we see him back on screen.

But today, on the eve of a Channel Five season of his best-loved movies, as millions of fans wonder why he   vanished Will Smith reveals that he has quietly transformed himself into a movie industry. The 41-year-old heads to new york next month to film the hotly- anticipated sequel Men In Black III but he has already built up a showbusiness empire with his family.

Smith is connected to 35 movies,  28 of which he is producing. His son Jaden has just broken through as a movie star at the age of 12 in The Karate Kid remake. Wife Jada Pinkett Smith is the star of a lauded US TV drama series and their nine-year-old daughter Willow, who lent her voice to  cartoon hit Madagascar 2, has just recorded a CD and is launching a fashion line for children. But it is no accident that his family has become a potent entertainment conglom erate.

“There has to be a vision,” says Smith. “like, why are we together? “If you don’t have a purpose for your relationship, if you don’t have a place that you’re going, something that you want to accomplish, something that you want to do, you can really get lost in the murk of the journey.”

Jada agrees:

“Once we started to see how the children were growing,  becoming their own human beings, we decided, ‘OK, we want to make this a family business. How do we incorporate all the talent that we have in this family?’”

Those dreams are inspired by Smith’s relentless hard work. “I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented,” he admits. “I’ve viewed myself as slightly above  average in talent. Where I excel is  a ridi culous, sickening, work ethic. you know, while the other guy’s sleeping I’m working. While the other guy’s eating I’m working.” But after two decades of success Smith suddenly found the disappointment of Seven Pounds and its  message of self-sacrifice giving him pause for thought.

The result has been taking a step back from the cameras, building a charitable foundation that donates hundreds of thousands to needy causes and forging a showbusiness empire with his family, while amassing a slate of movie projects that could keep him busy for another 20 years. Among Smith’s plans he hopes  to reprise some of his biggest hits:  I, Robot 2, Hancock 2, Bad Boys 3, Independence Day 2 and 3, and a  prequel to I Am legend, as well as several original movies.

After producing the remake of The Karate Kid with Jaden, which broke box office records, Smith plans to produce Karate Kid 2 next year. He has even become a successful Broadway producer, partnering with rapper Jay-Z on the hit musical Fela.

Jada is entering her third season as star of the lauded TV series  Hawthorne and Willow, who appeared with her father in I Am legend, has recorded an album as well as nurturing her fashion project while pursuing movie stardom.

“She just wants it,” Smith says. “She has a drive and an energy and she just connects to human emotion.

“It’s the family business. We shoot (movie) shorts around the house all the time. It’s just what our family does. And it’s what our kids know. “It’s something that they love doing. So we’re not asking them to do it or forcing them to do it. It’s just a part of our life.”

Moulding his children at an early age has been paramount for Smith, who attributes his own success to the often painful lessons he learned as a child,

from the death of his pet dog at the age of nine –

“Trixie was a white golden retriever that got hit by a car” – to his teenage obsession: “I was too focused on sex to even think about any other vices. I’m much the same now. no drugs and only the occasional drink.”

At the age of 12 Smith began performing rap music at parties in his home town of Philadelphia. This gave  him a con fidence bordering on braggadocio which led to trouble on his first day at high school at 14.

 “When I’m scared of things I feel like I have to attack it,” he explains.

“So I was terrified going into this new school and I walked into the lunch room – there were about 400 students in the lunch room – and  I walked in and whistled as loud as  I could whistle and I said, ‘Hey, it’s OK, he’s here now. Everybody can relax, he’s here!’”

Seconds later an unimpressed student knocked Smith unconscious.

“I remember laying there on the steps thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of power to have. This guy just got himself kicked out of school and could potentially go to jail based on something that I was able to control.

“If I have enough power to potentially make somebody throw their life away I probably have enough power to change somebody’s life for the  better.’ From that point I remember starting to think about how I could use that for good things.” However it was lost love that gave Smith the drive to become a movie star.

“I was about 15 years old when my fi rst girlfriend cheated on me and it so destroyed my concept of myself, that I wasn’t good enough,” he says. “I remember laying in my bed and making a decision that I would never not be good enough again. “That means with the movies, as a husband, as a father, everything I do in life I educate myself to the place that I can contend with the best on Earth and that’s the only way to keep my woman from leaving me.”

BY THE time he was 20 Smith had a Grammy award and seven chart hits including Parents Just Don’t Understand but he tore through $6million and was too broke to pay his taxes.

“I had a hit single on the radio for 30 days before I graduated from high school,” he recalls now with a smile. “That’s dangerous. It just seemed easy.”

But he reveals:

“The tide turned at 19. The Internal Revenue Service came and took all my stuff. They wanted $2.8million and I had $2  and 83 cents. “I went through fi ve or six million but I had the best time. I had a really, really good time. It was the best blown money ever.”

At 21 he moved to Hollywood, landing a starring role on the hit tele vision sitcom The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. He soon made his acclaimed movie debut playing a gay rent boy in Six Degrees Of Separation, launching a stellar fi lm career.

But his fi rst marriage to Sheree Zampino, which produced son Willard III – who is also known as Trey and is 17 – ended in divorce after four years. He admits:

“That is probably the most painful loss of my life.”

Smith makes marrying Matrix star Jada Pinkett in 1997 sound like a more pragmatic union. He claims:

 “We learned who we were. We learned who we wanted to be and we decided on a path to get there.”

Smith gave Jaden his big break co-starring in 2006’s emotional drama The Pursuit Of Happyness. This won Smith an Oscar nomination and resulted in a surprise for him when he had a lesson in acting – from his son.

“He changed how I act,” recalls the star. “We had been shooting for about two weeks and he looked up at me one day and said, ‘Daddy, you just do the same thing every take.’ And then I started watching him and he’s doing what acting is really supposed to be: he’s living in the moment. He’s pure and natural in the moment. That’s what actors look for.”

Even if we don’t see Will Smith on screen until Men In Black III comes out  in 2012 his presence will be felt throughout Hollywood and beyond as he is driven by his tireless work ethic.

“If you do not get what you desire because you are lazy there is no pain worse than that,” he says. He believes in the “power of the individual, of the human spirit to overcome”, adding: “It’s the  reason I’m attracted to happy endings. I really believe you can do that, you can will that into existence.” And where there’s a Will, there’s a Smith.  -Express