Seven Pounds a heavy movie for Will Smith

Will Smith’s latest film, Seven Pounds, opens Friday at area theaters. To play the role, Smith said he drew inspiration from some tragedies in his own life, including his 1995 divorce and the death of his grandmother. “It’s so different from how I look at life,” Smith said during a recent promotional stop in Dallas. “He got stuck in the tragedy. It was very helpful talking to people who had experienced loss. The major thing that kept coming back is that people said they would relive it every day. That was the thing that I was playing in certain moments, to be able to find the things that clicked me back into the moment of that loss.” Ben is an introspective part for Smith following on the heels of The Pursuit of Happyness and Hancock, two other movies in which he played emotionally withdrawn characters who are coping with tragic circumstances. Now he said he’s ready to return to the more upbeat, comic fare that characterized his rise to stardom in the late 1990s.