Will Smith conquers his fear of the ocean and sharks with terrifying shark dive

Discovery’s Shark Week continued its fin-tastic programming on Tuesday with the special Will Smith: Off the Deep End. In the piece, Will Smith addresses his fear of sharks and attempts to overcome it.

Smith revealed that his phobia of all things water started when he was very young. In fact, his fear was so great that he didn’t learn how to swim until he was in his 40s. He attributed much of that fear to Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Jaws.

“I blame Steven Spielberg,” said Smith. “I was literally scared in the bathtub. I literally felt like a shark could come out of the spout.”

As Smith has gotten older and wiser over the years, he has made it a point to overcome his fears. So he decided to learn how to scuba dive and swim with sharks. Smith documented a series of dives, culminating with a terrifying swim with a tiger shark.

“I am a firm believer that fear creates the greatest atrocities and evils that have ever been committed on this planet,” Smith said while sitting on the ocean floor surrounded by sharks. “Fear is poison and I’m gonna cleanse mine.”

The experience was so meaningful to Smith, that he believes it fundamentally changed him. He said, “There was Will Smith before the sharks and there is Will Smith after the sharks.”

For more on Shark Week check out Dicovery.com.

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