Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband, Will Smith, recently sat down together and plotted out their life and partnership goals on a piece of paper. "I'm doing what you might call a business plan in my marriage right now," says the 37-year-old mother of Willow, 8; Jaden, 10; and stepson Trey, 16. "I don't know why, but we all think these things are supposed to be in sync. You know, when you're in business, you figure out what your goals are, and how you're going to get all that achieved, right?" asks Pinkett Smith, who on a sweltering L.A. day makes a pair of skinny jeans and a white V-neck tee look perfectly polished. "Why don't we do that with our life partners?"
Equal parts realistic and optimistic, this state-of-the-union exercise seems a perfect microcosm of her worldview: "The point is to clear out a lot of unnecessary stuff so we can find ways of being better together," Pinkett Smith says matter-of-factly, "because your relationship is either moving forward or it's dying."
First on their list of priorities: Get back to nature, which includes learning how to surf as well as camping and hiking as a family. The process? Lots of research and a little delegation. "When the going gets rough, instead of just going 'Argh,' we sit down and say, 'We're going to find a way to do this.'" she says. "In this case, I say, 'Will, you find out exactly where we should go in Yellowstone with the kids, and I'll do Big Sur.'"
Pinkett Smith doesn't slow down long enough to let things not work out. This year alone, the actress and philanthropist, who starred most recently in The Women, also made her directorial debut with The Human Contract, finished executive-producing The Secret Life of Bees, opened a church, and founded a school with her husband in Westlake Village, California. Though she's best known for her role as the acrobatic Niobe in the Matrix series and as the voice of Gloria, the sassy hippo in Madagascar and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (which opens this month), Pinkett Smith has also toured as the lead singer of her heavy-metal band, Wicked Wisdom, with her young kids in tow. That was, however, before two of them had legitimate film careers of their own. (Willow most recently appeared in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, while Jaden will show up alongside Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly in next month's The Day the Earth Stood Still.)
"I've found that I'm at my best when I [engage] everything—the mind, the spirit, my body," she says. And as a mother of a girl, she is very conscious of emphasizing what she calls "the importance of wholeness in being a woman." In addition to her film career, Willow is a serious gymnast, and her mother is okay with however many activities she wants to take on. "I say to her, 'Always focus on your own personal strength,'" says the tiny and fit Pinkett Smith, who looks like she could do a backflip herself. "As long as you compete with you and stay on the track that you want to be on, you're going to be okay."
Child-rearing is one area that doesn't really require that much plotting out between Pinkett Smith and her husband. "We're kind of innately in tune with what we both want for the kids," she says—in large part because they had some similar experiences in childhood that they don't want to replicate in their own family. "We knew that part of our partnership would be creating the exact opposite of what we had." Pinkett Smith's parents were both in high school when she was born, and though they were married briefly, she was brought up primarily by her mom, a nurse, and her maternal grandmother, who died when she was 12. Failure to preserve the family unit is not even a possibility. "We find solutions because that's what we both want," she says. "There is no other option."
Also not an option: raising Hollywood brats. When it comes to manners and discipline, Pinkett Smith's philosophy sounds a lot like her marital plan—that is to say, considered and rigorous. "It's not 'please' and 'thank you' just 'because I told you so,' she explains. "I tell them, 'Every time you go out into the world, you are leaving an impression of yourself and this family with other people. What impression do you want to leave? Do you want people to think you are spoiled [rotten]?'" For Pinkett Smith, it's not just about etiquette—it's about a healthy self-esteem: "I want them to feel good; I want them to smile. Once children feel great about being who they are, you don't really have to worry about manners."
Next Page: Pinkett Smith's Golden Rules of Parenting
