Becoming ... Will Smith

"He's no-nonsense and secure in his own person," says Daphne Maxwell Reid of her former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air costar Will Smith. "He's really smart and his decisions are based on respect for people, for his family and for himself. Will is always going to have something to do because he is always thinking of what to do next."

Stealing a tender moment with wife Jada Pinkett Smith on the set of his romantic comedy Hitch, Smith puts love first. "Just like in my house when I was growing up, I knew that my mother was the center," he says. "Jada's physical, mental, spiritual health and comfort comes first, and then everything else will come from there."

After a three-year absence from the music scene, Smith is back with his ninth studio album, Lost and Found, and he has some help from the hip-hop world, including Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Mary J. Blige, Timbaland and Smith's old pal DJ Jazzy Jeff. The actor (performing at the San Remo Song Festival earlier this month) wrote the album between takes of his 2004 sci-fi thriller I, Robot.

Smith played a professional date doctor in his first romantic comedy, Hitch, but he needs no help with the ladies (costars Amber Valletta and Eva Mendes with him in February). Nor the box office: The film and its $20 million leading man raked in $150 million in just more than a month.

Smith says his father, Willard, who with wife Caroline raised the actor and his three siblings in West Philadelphia, inspires him to be an involved dad. "I look at my father and how he was able to keep four kids fed and clothed and still managed to find time to spend with us," says Smith (with Jada, daughter Willow, 4, and son Jaden, 6).

Smith also steps up to the role of philanthropist: On March 19 he flew to George, South Africa, to host an all-star concert that raised more than $1.6 million for Nelson Mandela's 46664 AIDS and HIV Awareness Fund. "I have made movies and music," he told the crowd of 20,000 about accepting Mandela's invitation to participate, "I felt like that's not enough. I want to fight and I want to struggle."

Though Smith's smooth-talking character in Hitch had no problem plunging into romantic entanglements, the actor (on the movie's set) says in the past his dating style had been more cautious. "I always had female friends that would go to make sure that the girl liked me before I even approached. I wouldn't put myself out there like that."

Of his work in the 2001 biopic Ali – for which his portrayal of boxing great Muhammad Ali (left) earned him a Best Actor Oscar nod – Smith says: "We were fighting for real and not pulling any punches. I felt like I was going to pass out a lot of days."

He's a rapper, an actor – and an author, too. In 2001, Smith put the words of his 1998 Bill Withers remake "Just the Two of Us" to paper in a book of the same name. It chronicled a father-son relationship from birth to young adulthood (based on his own experience with son Trey, now 12) and urged fathers to teach their sons honor, dignity and respect.

In 1985, Smith, then 16, met DJ Jeff Townes, then 20, at a friend's party. The pair (in 1989) developed a stage act, performed at church functions and later at clubs as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. In 1988, after three albums (two of them platinum), the now-defunct duo won the first-ever best rap performance Grammy for "Parents Just Don't Understand."

On NBC's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996), Smith (with executive producer Quincy Jones) played a West Philadelphia teenager taken in by wealthy relatives. "He made sure the lines of communication were always open," says former castmate Tatyana Ali of Smith's ability to buoy the cast. "When he saw you in the morning he gave you a big hug."

Smith met first wife Sheree Zampino when they were visiting a mutual friend on the set of A Different World in 1991. They married the next year, and divorced in 1995. "We had a new son (Trey), and my career was taking off," he says. "There was a lot of pressure that didn't allow the marriage to blossom."

Smith (left, in 1996, and 1997) is a devoted dad to his three children, and says great fathers make time for their kids no matter how busy they are. "I see guys who make $30,000 a year and work two jobs and are out in the park on a Saturday afternoon with their kids," he says.

On New Year's Eve 1997, Smith married his second wife, actress Jada Pinkett, whom he'd met in 1990 on the Fresh Prince set and began dating in 1995. How does the pair keep it together? "He always makes me laugh," says Jada, "even when I'm mad at him."