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ON ANY given day, Hong Kong's Time Square is bursting with people. But this is not any ordinary day.
Hundreds have gathered to see Will Smith at the Asian premiere of his sci-fi thriller I Am Legend, and the frenzy has reached fever pitch. Heralding his arrival, two drummers beat barrel-sized drums to a rising crescendo. The action superstar emerges from behind a stage.
He says in Cantonese: 'Nei hou ma? Ngor hai Will Smith. (How are you? I am Will Smith.)'
The crowd goes wild, whooping and whistling. Smith grins and says in English: 'In America, we do our drumming a little differently.'
He cups both hands over his microphone and turns into a human beatbox. He starts bass-thumping and vocal-scratching with his mouth, swaying his body to the beat. The crowd roars with delight. Smith is a consummate showman and everyone loves him for it.
But earlier that day, when Life! met him at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, where he is doing the press rounds for the film which opens in Singapore next Tuesday, he is a different creature altogether.
The galumphing swagger is absent. The confident aplomb is missing. What remains is a sweet, earnest and thoughtful man, almost at odds with his larger-than-life public persona.
He has had to overcome many obstacles as an African-American actor in a white-dominated Hollywood. Not too long ago, studio execs thought that an African-American actor could never have the same international box-office appeal of, say, Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks.
But today, Smith - along with other African-American icons like Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama - is changing mindsets and rewriting the rules of what a black person can do.
Read the full story in Life! in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times.
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