He was likable in Fresh Prince and I used to be a fan of the show, especially the butler’s wisecracks.
Agree -- also the Carlton character was so funny. The show was family-oriented and clean fun that we were comfortable letting our teenager watch, unlike many episodes of Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier that were on in the same time frame.
His descent into Hollyweirdness is tragic. Had it not been for his early success at rapping which sucked him up into show biz, he probably would have gone to college like his mother, or had an honorable career like his father. Here is his bio from Wikipedia, which aligns with the Fresh Prince character that made him a star:
Smith was born on September 25, 1968, in Philadelphia, to Caroline (née Bright), a Philadelphia school board administrator, and Willard Carroll Smith Sr., a U.S. Air Force veteran and refrigeration engineer. His mother graduated from Carnegie Mellon University* Wynnefield was not a terrible neighborhood at the time. Much of West Philly in the years he was growing up was dotted with black churches in almost every block of the main thoroughfares. All of Philadelphia bears little resemblance now to the family-friendly place it was then.He grew up in West Philadelphia's Wynnefield neighborhood* , and was raised Baptist. He has an older sister named Pamela and two younger siblings, twins Harry and Ellen. Smith attended Our Lady of Lourdes, a private Catholic elementary school in Philadelphia, followed by Overbrook High School. His parents separated when he was 13, but did not actually divorce until around 2000.
Smith began rapping at the age of 12. When his grandmother found a notebook of his lyrics, which he described as containing "all [his] little curse words", she wrote him a note on a page in the book, which read, "Dear Willard, truly intelligent people do not have to use words like this to express themselves. Please show the world that you're as smart as we think you are". Smith said that this influenced his decision not to use profanity in his music.
I think steroids did him in. But he can still recover and hope he does.
Why do so many actors take steroids to look like steroid-user Arnold Schwarzenegger? Steroids screws up your mind, among other things, causing unexplained and bizarre behavior with abundant examples such as Tiger Woods.