In his new memoir titled Will, the famous actor opened up about his traumatic childhood and the impulse he had to "avenge" his mother, Caroline Bright, of the constant physical and psychological violence she was subjected to by his father William Carol Smith Sr., for decades.

 

Smith previewed an excerpt from his upcoming book to People Magazine, where he details one of the episodes that marked his childhood and defined his personality.

 

"My father was violent, but he was also at every rehearsal, play and recital. He was an alcoholic, but he was sober at every premiere of every one of my films. He listened to every record, visited every studio. The same intense perfectionism that terrified my family put food on the table every night of my life," he said at the beginning of the interview by way of recollection. 

 

The actor explained the complicated relationship he had with his father, William Carroll Smith, and that he himself had with his wife Carol and their three children, while growing up in Philadelphia.

"When I was nine years old, I saw my father hit my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed. I saw her spit up blood. That moment in the room, possibly more than any other in my life, has defined who I am," Smith recounts in his book, regretful that he did nothing at the time. "Within everything I've done since then, the awards, accolades, the characters ... there's a string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day, for not standing up to my father, for being a coward."

 

"When I was a kid, I always told myself that someday I would avenge my mother. That when I was old enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would kill him," he wrote.

 

The superstar related that one night, he was wheeling his cancer-stricken and intoxicated father in a wheelchair, and as he stopped at the top of the stairs he considered whether he she push his father from there and kill him.

 

However, he didn't.

 

"The decades of pain, anger, resentment and curses receded. And I proceeded to take Daddy to the bathroom," he concluded in the book's account.

 

Smith's father died in 2016, approximately 16 years after separating from his wife Carol.