USA Today recently ran a cover story on Will Smith that spells out how the affable actor has amassed over $2.45 billion in North American box office receipts.  I’ve grabbed some excerpts that should provide guidance to just about any type of brand.

Spend seven seconds sitting across from Will Smith, and you’ll never wonder why he’s a superstar. He’s charming and attentive, observant and clever — without ever seeming to try. When he talks, he makes eye contact; when he laughs, it takes over his whole body.

Smith, 40,  is consistently in charge, on point and thinking ahead. Here’s how he does it:

1. Think globally

Any film Smith makes, as a star or through his Overbrook production company, “has to be extraordinary, it has to be entertainment, it has to be art.” And be “delivered to all people of the world.”

“If we don’t know how to sell it, we’re not going to begin — no matter how extraordinary I think the entertainment art is going to be.”

2. Talent at the top 

Smith handpicks his directors.

“He takes me to places that I’d never choose myself,” Smith says of director Gabriele Muccino, who directed him to an Oscar nomination for 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness.

3. Mix it up, to a point

“I have to challenge myself and push myself,” Smith says. “My only job is to make sure I don’t leave anything on the table, that I maximize what a young dude from Philly can do in the world of cinema. There’s no telling what I can create at this point.”

Two scripts he’d love to star in that Overbrook is developing are the stories of Nelson Mandela and Marvin Gaye. “I’m not certain I’m actor enough yet,” Smith admits. “I love both of those, and I need to make sure I’m man enough.”

4. Preserve the Smith brand 

Smith doesn’t get busted for DUIs or punch or scream at paparazzi.

“By being famous, you’re afforded rights that other people who aren’t famous aren’t afforded,” he says. “If I’m going to walk to the front of the line (at the restaurant) because I’m Will Smith, then I have to sign all the autographs. If I don’t want to sign any autographs, I don’t walk to the front of the line. It’s that simple. Stand in the line with everybody else.”

5. Cross color lines

Growing up in Philadelphia, Smith attended a mostly white Catholic elementary school and a mostly African-American high school. He lived in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, attended a Baptist church and admired the Muslim girls who lived one street over.

Along the way, Smith learned that laughter is collective and unifying. “Those universal elements became really clear in my experiences growing up.”

6. Be master of your domain

Since 1996’s blockbuster Independence Day, Smith has generated a movie a year, sometimes two. When he signs on, he’s fully committed.

“He’s very firm with his own ideas and considerations about things,” Muccino says. “He doesn’t change his mind easily. If he says no, it’s no. If he says yes, it’s yes. He’s a man of his word. In Italy we call them men of honor.”

7. Leave nothing to chance

“We talked through all the elements of where we want to be so we can start, in this moment, designing our life toward that.”

Read the full story

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