A look into Will Smith’s relationship history: How movie superstar married, dated a string of Hollywood leading ladies and became linked to many more before settling down with Jada in 1997

Will Smith’s love life has been thrust back into the spotlight after the Hollywood star was accused of having sex with fellow Fresh Prince actor Duane Martin.

The Men in Black star, 55, has fiercely denied the claims made by Brother Bilaal, who describes himself as Smith’s former personal assistant. His spokesperson labeled them as ‘unequivocally false’.

The latest allegations about the actor’s private life come just weeks after wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shocking revelation that they have, in fact, been divorced for seven years — and haven’t considered each other as husband and wife in all that time.

She discussed the truth about the breakup of their 25-year marriage during an interview with Hoda Kotb on the Today show to launch her new book Worthy, and said they were still trying to figure out what the future of their marriage looks like .

Jada, 52, who previously admitted an affair in 2020, says in the book that they split: ‘It wasn’t a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce.’

Her surprising revelation came a year after their relationship came into focus after Will Smith flew into a rage and punched Chris Rock live at the 94th Academy Awards, telling him to “Keep my wife’s name out of your damn mouth” when the comic made a joke about Jada’s short hair.

Smith received a lot of backlash for the punch and Jada later admitted that she was surprised to hear him call her his wife.

“We haven’t called each other husband and wife in a long time,” she added in an interview during the Hoda Kotb.

The confirmation that their relationship has shifted from the happy couple they once were is the latest low point in a series of ups and downs for Will and his often public love life, including a previous marriage and relationships with several high-profile beauties.

The King Richard actor had a penchant for meeting his girlfriends on the set of The Fresh Prince, with at least four of his celebrity dalliances stemming from his time on the hit show, including both his wives.

He met his first wife, Sheree Zampino, during a taping of The Fresh Prince. The couple was together from 1991 to 1995, married in 1992 and had a son together, Trey, that same year.

The relationship was reportedly difficult and they divorced in 1995, an event that Will Smith once admitted was one of the hardest things he has ever had to deal with.

Despite this, the couple remains close. In 2018, Will Smith called her “the best baby mama ever” in an Instagram post in honor of her birthday.

The pair even posed with his Best Actor Oscar after the 94th Academy Awards, during which he punched comedian Chris Rock for making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith.

While Will’s career and fame skyrocketed after their breakup, Sheree didn’t quite follow the same trajectory. She appeared on all three seasons of VH1’s “Hollywood Exes,” a reality TV show that documented the lives of women who dated famous people.

Her castmates included Nicole Murphy, the ex-wife of Eddie Murphy, and Andrea Kelly, the ex-wife of R. Kelly.

Smith also met Haitian-American actress Garcelle Beauvais on the set of the show. She revealed on a 2020 episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hill that she and Smith had dated in the early 1990s, but admitted in a 2022 interview that they were not in a “long-term relationship.”

‘I was resourceful, he as a single and TV star, so we went out a few times.’

The pair were dating while he was married to Sheree. Garcelle admitted that she only found out he was seeing multiple people when she called him at an awkward time while he was with Sheree and their son Trey.

“I remember calling him one day and he was in the car. And his son, with Sheree, [they] sat in the back.

“You know, he picked up the car, or Bluetooth or whatever it was at the time, or the speaker – whatever it was – and he said, ‘Hey, how are you?’ And I said, “I’m great.”

“And I heard a little voice in the background say, ‘Is that Miss Jada?’

‘And then I thought, “Okay, I’m not the only one.” Exit stage left.

“If a child knows someone, that person is a little more important, right?!”

It wasn’t just actresses he met and dated while working on the Fresh Prince. He began dating supermodel Tyra Banks between 1993 and 1994, after meeting when she auditioned for The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, in what would become her first TV acting gig.

She managed to land the role and played his ex-girlfriend Jackie from Philadelphia for eight episodes in season four.

Although they dated for a year, reports claimed that nothing ever “got serious” between them.

Since Smith was married to Sheree Zampino at the time, it is currently unknown what Banks and Smith’s relationship was like, or how it affected his marriage, which ended in 1995.

Despite this, Banks’ career flourished and has since appeared on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, as well as editorials for Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar.

From 1997 to 2005, she was also a Victoria’s Secret Angel.

In an episode of his Class of ’88 podcast, it was revealed that Will Smith and Sandra Denton, best known as Pepa in the hip-hop duo Salt-N-Pepa, dated in the late 1980s.

Denton looked at Will doubtfully after he reminded her that the pair were dating.

After she shot daggers at him, he quickly said, “We can talk about it! We have grown up! We don’t do anything.’

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith began dating shortly after her divorce from then-husband Sheree Fletcher in 1995, having met a year earlier on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Although Will was initially interested in her, he took no action and instead dated Tyra Banks for a year.

The couple married in 1997 while Jada was pregnant. She later admitted that she “didn’t really want to get married” to Will Smith.

‘I was under so much pressure as a young actress. I just didn’t know what to do,” she said in a 2022 episode of her Red Table talk show.

‘I was so upset that I had to get married. I was so angry that I walked down the aisle crying. I cried all the way down the aisle,” she added.

Her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, admitted the marriage was “terrible.”

‘It was a mess. Jada was ill, she was very unpleasant… She didn’t cooperate with anything.’

But the same couldn’t be said for Will, who said in the same episode, “There wasn’t a day in my life when I wanted to do anything other than get married and have a family.”

“From literally the age of 5, I imagined what my family would be like.”

Their marriage was rocky from the start, and became even rockier in 2013 when she led the world to believe the pair were in an open relationship, after telling an interviewer, “I always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want. want. as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and everything is going well.”

“Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he’s his own man.”

She later clarified the comments, saying in a social media post, “Open marriage? The statement I made regarding ‘Will can do whatever he wants’ has underscored the need to discuss the relationship between trust and love, and how they coexist.”

She revealed earlier this year that the couple had been separated since 2016 and were no longer living together, although they were still married.

She told NBC News at the time that she had promised herself that she and Will would never divorce, and that she did her best not to break that promise.

But in 2020 it was revealed that at the age of 44 she had an affair with 23-year-old rapper August Alsina, a friend of her son Jaden.

She initially denied the relationship, but later admitted she had an “entanglement” with him.

But Jada wasn’t the only one apparently fooling around outside of the marriage.

Actress Karrine Steffans reportedly dated Will Smith in 2004. It is unknown how their relationship worked as Smith was already long married to Jada Pinkett Smith at the time.

No exact timeline of their relationship exists, and while there are no official reports of the couple dating, she reportedly mentioned the relationship in her book “The Vixen Diaries.”

The now 45-year-old ran away from her home at the age of 16 and began working as an exotic dancer, after a long and difficult childhood in the US Virgin Islands and Florida.

Despite this, she became a New York Times bestselling author several times with her series of autobiographies.