Jada Pinkett Smith

Despite employing teachers who are members of the Church of Scientology and using teaching methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, administrators at Will Smith's new private school insist that it isn't a Scientology school.

Both Mr. Smith and Jada Pinckett Smith say they do not belong to the church and the New Village School's director, Jacqueline Olivier, told The Los Angeles Times' Carla Rivera that while some of its staff members are Scientologists, the school has no religious affiliation. Members of its staff are also Muslim, Christian, and Jewish.

"We are a secular school and just like all nonreligious independent schools, faculty and staff do not promote their own religions at school or pass on the beliefs of their particular faith to children," she said.  read more »

We all know how powerful China is becoming, but powerful enough to deflate the ego of one of Hollywood’s most sought-after leading men? This morning brought the news that China has yet to green-light Will Smith’s latest blockbusting effort, I Am Legend, which opens here on December 14. The apparent snub comes loosely attached to a report that the nation of 1,321,851,888 citizens plans to block all American movies, hoping to boost its own budding film industry. (Let’s also not forget that I Am Legend basically equates populous areas with violence and death; the only haven of solace is found in pastoral Vermont.) “We struggled very, very hard to try to get it to work out, but there are only a certain amount of foreign films that are allowed in,” Mr. Smith told reporters in Hong Kong today.

Poor guy can’t get a break. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Smith, 39, admits to being insecure. When he was 15, his first girlfriend broke his heart. “[I]t destroyed my concept of myself,” he told the Wenner music book, adding: “I [thought I] wasn’t good enough.” He then recalls a certain look his grandmother once gave him, the look of someone who’s proud. It affected him to such a degree that he now needs to find it in the faces of all the women in his life—namely, in that of his lovely wife, Jada Pinkett. “Every singe day Jada must have the look. I can’t function if she doesn’t have that look in her eyes.” Ms. Pinkett’s proud-look is probably awesome, but we’d most like to see the look on his first girlfriend’s face when she saw The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for the first time.  read more »

In the latest issue of Men’s Vogue, Will Smith tells the book that, after flirting with Buddhism and Hinduism in the past, he has started to study Scientology with Hollywood pal Tom Cruise. Adding to Mr. Smith’s recent revelation, a source apparently told US Weekly that the I Am Legend star’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, 36, has also become interested in the quasi-religion started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.  read more »