Will Smith tells his mother he contemplated suicide as teen

Will Smith shared an emotional moment with his mother Caroline Bright, discussing a traumatic moment in his life when he considered suicide as a teen.

The actor opened up to his mother, saying he felt like a failure when he saw his father, Willard Carroll Smith Sr, brutally beating her when he was a child.

‘With me standing there in the doorway, I watched my father punch my mother so hard that she spit up blood,’ he said on his series Best Shape Of My Life.

Bringing his mother to sit next to him, the 53-year-old continued: ‘That was the only time in my life that I ever considered suicide.’

‘That was the only time in my life that I ever thought about killing myself, because it was all my failure in my mind.’

Will’s parents split when he was a teenager and divorced in 2000, and despite maintaining a close relationship with his father, Will struggled to forgive him for the violence he witnessed, and even contemplated killing him years later when he cared for him while he had cancer.

In an extract from his memoir Will, the actor wrote: ‘One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me. 

‘The path between the two rooms goes past the top of the stairs. As a child I’d always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him.’

The actor wrote that he paused at the top of the stairs, thinking he could ‘shove him down, and easily get away with it’.

However he went on to say ‘decades of pain, anger, and resentment’ abated and he shook his head and proceeded to wheel his father to the bathroom.

Willard died in 2016, with Will explaining that his death made him reflect on their relationship.

Will is married to Jada Pinkett Smith and the pair have been together for about 25 years.

They share their children Jaden, 23, and Willow, 21.

MORE : Will Smith recalls moment when his mother caught him having sex as a teenager

MORE : Will Smith’s jaw ‘nearly dislocated’ from shock after seeing daughter Willow with shaved head for first time