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A hard act to follow

Will and Jaden Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness
  • Posted at 3:48pm
  • 15 February 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

In the uplifting true-story drama The Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith stars as Chris Gardner, while his son is played by…Jaden Smith, his real-life son, now aged nine. The kid can certainly act, but more importantly, he and Dad have a chemistry that's hard to fabricate.

Perhaps it's this shortcut to a convincing on-screen relationship that explains cinema's rampant nepotism. (Smith spoke of an "overwhelmingly powerful emotion" playing opposite Smith Jr, which may be why he cast seven-year-old daughter Willow in I Am Legend.)

It's still quite rare for sons and daughters to play children of mum or dad. Liza Minnelli only once appeared with her mother Judy Garland in the 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime. John Mills and 18-year-old Hayley played dad and tomboy daughter in The Truth about Spring, while Henry and Jane Fonda provided an emotional pairing in On Golden Pond. Yet Clint Eastwood cast son Kyle as his teenage nephew rather than son in Honkytonk Man.

Nepotism doesn't always work out, though. When Francis Ford Coppola, centre of a dynasty including actress sister Talia Shire and her son Jason Schwartzman, famously cast his daughter Sofia in The Godfather Part III, her weak performance undermined the drama. But this may have pushed her towards an illustrious directing career, instead.

Sofia's own daughter, Romy, is not yet two. Let's see what happens, shall we?

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