Will Smith recently sat down with Esquire, where he spoke openly about the failure of Sci-Fi epic “After Earth”. M. Night Shyamalan helmed the film which grossed a global $243 million on a reported production budget of $130 million. Smith spoke on the fact that his son Jaden Smith starred in the feature which made it the “most painful failure” of his career. That as the biggest drawback that made the experience such a sour failure for Will when looking back upon it.

“I never would have looked at myself in that way. I was a guy who, when I was 15, my girlfriend cheated on me, and I decided that if I was number one, no woman would ever cheat on me. All I have to do is make sure that no one’s ever better than me, and I’ll have the love that my heart yearns for. And I never released that and moved into a mature way of looking at the world and my artistry and love until the failure of ‘After Earth,’ when I had to accept that it’s not a good source of creation.”

Smith said when he received box office numbers the following Monday, he was “devastated for about 24 minutes,” and shortly after, he received a call that his father had cancer. “That put it in perspective — viciously.”

After a 90-minute treadmill session immediately following the news, Smith had an epiphany.

“That Monday started the new phase of my life, a new concept: Only love is going to fill that hole,” Smith said. “You can’t win enough, you can’t have enough money, you can’t succeed enough. There is not enough. The only thing that will ever satiate that existential thirst is love. And I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.”

Smith returns to theaters in his latest FOCUS releasing in theaters February 27th.

SOURCE: VARIETY