Proud to be a pushy parent:

Jada Pinkett Smith on her children's ascent to stardom, but are they too young for fame?

By Rebecca Hardy for MailOnline
Updated: 05:19 EDT, 8 April 2011

Jada Pinkett Smith is a firecracker of a woman. Fizzing with passion one minute, calm as a Buddhist monk the next, she admits she’s not an easy person to love.

Quite what merry hell she put her husband, the actor Will Smith, through when he once claimed she gave him permission to stray — this was later dismissed as a joke — is anybody’s guess, but she wouldn’t have minced her words.

‘Nobody’s going to pull the wool over my eyes,’ she says. ‘I’m very clear about that.’ God forbid anyone should try.

Spotlight: Jaden, Jada, Will and Willow at the premiere of the film 'Karate Kid at London's Leicester Square

Jada will be 40 later this year. When this is mentioned her PR, who is tapping away on her BlackBerry, interrupts to say 39 sounds better. But Jada’s having none of it.

‘I like saying I’m going to be 40,’ she says. ‘I’m transitioning into a whole other state of being by having a young daughter who’s now just beginning her career.’

She’s talking about Willow, the Smiths’ precocious ten-year-old who has become the trendiest girl on the planet following the phenomenal success of her debut single Whip My Hair.

I’m surprised Jada’s volunteered this so candidly. We’re supposed to be discussing Hawthorne, a hospital drama in which Jada plays the newly-widowed chief nursing officer Christina Hawthorne, who juggles the demands of her career with bringing up a teenage daughter.

I’ve been told she doesn’t really want to talk about Willow. But the subject’s out in the open now. ‘There are certain things I need to be for her,’ says Jada. ‘Things I need to give her — support, knowledge, wisdom and guidance. I have to be a mum, and I have to be mentor because I’ve been down that road. I know what it is.’

Gosh, talk about a pushy parent. And it doesn’t stop with Willow. The couple’s 12-year-old son Jaden had his first starring role in the 2010 £25 million remake of the Eighties hit The Karate Kid, which Jada produced.

Jada Pinkett Smith and co-star Michael Vartan. She plays the newly widowed chief nursing officer Christina Hawthorne in the hospital drama

Now it isn’t as if the Smiths — who earned £20 million between them last year alone —are short of a bob or two. So why put their children in the spotlight?

‘That’s the thing that’s difficult for people to understand,’ Jada says. ‘This isn’t about fame or money. They were still going to have their trials because of who their parents are. As much as I wish I could figure out a way I could protect my children, they have their destiny. I’m not going to put brakes on that out of fear.’

Right then. But Willow’s only ten. Isn’t that a little young for destiny to come knocking? ‘Our children are allowed to stay in the paradigm of being a child,’ Jada says. ‘They don’t have to take care of their families: become the breadwinners, become the complete emotional, physical and financial focus that happens to many child stars.

‘Our family structure is a little different and it’s quite hard to comprehend because it’s so outside what usually happens in a family, but the paradigm is the same.

‘You have Mother. You have Father. Father is protective. Mother is the teacher. Most of the time with child stars, the child has all the responsibilities and the mother and father don’t understand what’s actually happening to them, so the child can trust no one.

‘They feel: “I have to do this all by myself.” And start to connect to people around them who might not be that trustworthy. But with us, the paradigm stays the same because the child can still be the child with an extraordinary gift.

‘It is something to manage. I will not overlook that. I have a ten-year-old who can stand up in front of an audience of 17,000 and rock the house. I have to keep her grounded.’

Grounded? We’re talking here about a ten-year-old who turned up at a movie premiere with a mohawk and Givenchy handbag.

‘I would say we’re giving her the freedom to express herself through her dress — with boundaries. She can’t wear tight leather pants or a corset,’ says Jada.

‘There’s certain areas we just have to ease up on as far as our children are concerned. It’s not about a certain pair of trousers or a certain jacket or if a child wants to shave her head. I mean, hair grows back.

‘I find areas for Willow to express herself that, to me, are very safe — such as her dress. I’m not going to let her go out with her midriff showing and she’s not wearing any heels.’ Which I suppose is logic of a  sort, but to understand it you need to understand Jada.

Child star: Willow Smith performs at the National Indoor Arena on the first date of her UK tour supporting Justin Bieber

Between us on the coffee table in the Knightsbridge hotel room I’m talking to her in is The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia Of Your  Energetic Anatomy — a rather weighty reference book for healers, and Jada’s bedtime reading.

Jada was bought up in a dirt-poor neighbourhood in Baltimore, Maryland. Her mother was addicted to heroin and her father told her aged seven: ‘I’m a drug addict and a criminal, I can’t be your father.’

She went to Hollywood at 19: ‘When I came to Hollywood, I was looking for love because of what I felt I lacked at home. Then I recognised I’d never find what I was looking for in the entertainment business, so I had to strip everything down and rebuild it again.

‘I believe that when we travel to our darkest places, our soul finds itself and does the most work.

‘That’s why we’re constantly challenged in different ways. The universe will throw thing at you, but I believe there’s blessings on the other side of the pain.

‘This year I lost my father, my grandmother and my aunt. Those losses have created an extraordinary change within my psyche.

‘I had to learn about forgiveness, letting go — understanding that people do the best they can.

‘With my father, I didn’t have a problem with the fact he felt he wasn’t fit to be with my mother, but I did have a problem with the fact he felt it was worth a try when I was famous.

‘I was very angry. But in the last two years I reached out to him, luckily enough. He died of an overdose. I understand now that, in the state he was in, he absolutely did the best he could.

‘When it comes to death, all of the other things we spend so much time on don’t matter at all. So why focus on them while we’re living? 

‘The jewels you leave behind are the memories of how you love. And for me, that love gets tangible through our children.

‘There’s a cycle of mine in Hollywood that’s ending now and the birth of another cycle — my daughter’s cycle. I have to be the best I can be for her.’

Hawthorne begins on Sony Entertainment, TV Sky Channel 157, on Thursday, April 7 at 8pm.