As an in-demand Hollywood actor and a caring father, Will Smith rarely has a quiet moment by himself. But in I Am Legend, the star plays the sole survivor in New York City after a man-made virus wipes out most of the world's population.
'During the making of I Am Legend I was forced to be alone - my family stayed in Los Angeles for most of the shooting - and it was the most amount of time I had ever been by myself,' says Smith, who was in Hong Kong recently to promote the science fiction movie, which opened yesterday.
Smith's character, Robert Neville, is a virologist who talks to himself, his dog and mannequins while trying to find a cure for the virus that either kills or turns its victims into nocturnal cannibalistic mutants.
It is perhaps Smith's darkest and most difficult performance to date. Without a strong co-star - such as Tommy Lee Jones in the Men in Black franchise or Eva Mendes in Hitch - Smith carries the movie alone. He gives emotional depth to an apocalyptic movie about the instinctive human fear of loneliness and the dark.
Smith says finding universal themes is his way of striking a chord with audiences. 'Most people are influenced by ideas that are pre-programmed,' he says.
'Everybody wants to be able to feed their kids so I have something like The Pursuit of Happyness. It is about a man who wants to feed his child. Everybody gets it. There's no language barrier. That is an idea that is pre-programmed in anybody who has a child.