Will Smith Argued Against Shooting The Bad Boys Scene That Made Him A Movie Star

Although Will Smith's acting career truly began with "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," where he practically played a TV sitcom version of himself, his road to global movie stardom happened a few years later. After getting small parts in "Where the Day Takes You" and "Made in America," he purposefully took the lead role in the low-key drama, "Six Degrees of Separation," to establish himself as a serious actor (rather than a rapper who appeared in films). But the feature that made him an A-lister and blockbuster name was Michael Bay's classic 1995 buddy-cop picture, "Bad Boys." Today, the "Bad Boys" franchise is now synonymous with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith.

But back when they were shooting it, the inexperienced newcomer Smith had an argument with Bay, who was just transitioning from music video director to big-time, world-shaking filmmaker. It was all about the chase scene where Mike (played by Smith) and Marcus are in a shootout and running down bad guys on the streets of Miami, and the former's unbuttoned shirt is flying open, revealing his hairless manly chest. Recalling the debate in a 2011 GQ interview, Smith said, "Bay was like, 'Oh, take your shirt off and run with the gun!' And I was like, 'Come on, man. That's just on the edge of corny.' But he can take things that you'd think of as corny, and make it supergalactic iconic." Watching it back on camera, Bay's counterpoint was dead-simple — he told Smith the scene would make him look like a movie star, and the actor had to agree. After that iconic sequence, Will Smith was indeed a movie star.

If you watch that scene (and movie) today, it's evident that Bay's talent for creating bombastic, over-the-top, and breakneck-style action was already on full display, alongside Smith's laid-back masculine charisma and cool bravado that he cashed in on so many times afterward (like in his next movie, which was a sci-fi almost backed by the military). He just needed someone to point that out and reassure him about its effectiveness. And if Bay was excellent at something early on, it was making anything and anyone look cool as hell through fast-paced cuts, slow-motion edits, and the now-trademark 360-degree spin shot he ended the chase with.

With that sequence and how "Bad Boys" turned out, blowing up the box office, Smith learned a crucial lesson about acting. As he said in that GQ interview, the potential importance of a single image hit him hard as his movie success unfolded in the years to come. He remembered hearing women gasp when they saw him shirtless and knew that he had made the transition from boy-next-door to a man who could handle himself in whatever situation the world presented.

Made on a relatively small budget ($19 million) for a large-scale action film, "Bad Boys" amassed a $141 million worldwide box-office haul and launched the film career of Bay, while also catapulting Smith and Martin Lawrence into the big time in Hollywood. Since then, the film has grown into a billion-dollar franchise with three sequels, and Smith became one of the most well-known movie stars in the world.