Jada Pinkett Smith: Queen of all she surveys

Jada-Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith are as close to Hollywood royalty as it gets. But despite both of them being eagerly sought by top directors - and best friends with Tom and Katie Cruise - the Smiths are nevertheless indifferent to the trappings of celebrity, home-schooling their three children far away from the Hollywood madness on a 100-acre ranch nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains outside Malibu.

With a price-tag of $28m a movie, Smith, 38, is clearly the more successful partner in this celebrity marriage, although the disparity in their salaries is the least of Pinkett Smith's concerns. What really annoys her is that many people presume she is mostly famous for being married to someone more famous. Even more tiresome to her are the ubiquitous headlines characterising her as wearing the trousers in the relationship. She positively bristles at suggestions that she is the "tougher half" of this power couple, a 5ft dynamo who rules her 6ft 2in husband through sheer force of will.

"I can see why some people's perceptions are that way," she purrs in her honey-and-steel voice. "But I have to tell you that I actually think Will is the tougher half in the dynamic of our relationship." So she's not the boss after all? "Well, come on," she sighs. "You have to think of someone who's had the amount of success that Will has had. You can't be a big softie having the amount of success that he has. It's just not possible."

Not that Pinkett Smith hasn't enjoyed her own success. Making her movie debut in the Hughes brothers' 1993 low-budget sleeper crime caper Menace II Society, she translated the film's unexpected success into a bigger role in Keenen Ivory Wayans' comedy A Low Down Dirty Shame a year later. Two years after that, she hit a double jackpot, starring opposite Eddie Murphy in blockbuster The Nutty Professor at around the same time as she snagged Hollywood's hottest leading man.

Today, she knows where her priorities lie: "Parenthood is my biggest gig yet, and I'm determined to do it right. I don't want to be one of those mothers who just drops kids off or has a live-in nanny," insists the 35-year old actress. "I have little patience for those who downplay the importance of family. I think it's so unfortunate that in this society people really look down on women who want to make their family a priority. When people ask me what I'm doing now and I say, 'I'm a Mom,' they look at me as if to say, 'You have to be kidding'," says the actress, who raises the couple's eight-year-old son Jaden and six-year-old daughter Willow, along with Smith's son Trey, 14, from his first marriage.

"I'm very aware how busy careers can quickly lead to divorce, but I'm not going to let that happen to us. I will throw my career away before I let it break up our marriage. I made it clear to Will. I'd throw it away completely, which is what I'm doing to a certain extent."

For a number of years, Pinkett Smith's career did indeed waver: in 1997, she appeared in the teen thriller Scream 2 - a commercial hit, albeit an act of artistic suicide - followed by several fast-forgotten independent films. Two children later, Pinkett Smith began to regain her credibility by starring opposite her husband in 2001's Ali, then fully asserted her creative independence a year later with the pivotal role of Niobe in the second and third films of The Matrix trilogy, for which she spent 18 months in Australia with her family.

In the aftermath of her husband's much-nominated performance in The Pursuit of Happyness, today it's Pinkett Smith's turn to shine, starring opposite Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle in Reign Over Me, a thought-provoking drama in which Sandler portrays Charlie, who lost his family in the events of September 11, and Cheadle his old college roommate, Alan. Their close friendship soon causes problems with Alan's wife, played by Pinkett Smith.

What is refreshing about the film is that it offers no glib quick-fixes to Charlie's grief - no therapist waving a magic wand or overly cheery friends to coax him from the depths of his despair. Such a realistic approach to life's sorrows is one of the many reasons that Pinkett Smith was attracted to the role, as was the fact that she is playing a wife and mother struggling within a seemingly happy and affluent, but actually dysfunctional, marriage.

"For me, these were experiences that were relatable, but the most interesting aspect of the relationship between this particular couple is that you see all the time how the smallest little germs can get inside of a relationship; things that aren't really tangible, but can create such a huge deterioration within a marriage.

"And you see this all the time - these are the things that you always have to be careful of. In this film, you see that these are two individuals who have basically immersed themselves in the idea of their marriage but have forgotten who they were as individuals. And even though you have this union as husband and wife, you can never forget who you are, just simply as yourself. And if you lose yourself then everything else will fall out; there is no relationship to be had if you don't have a relationship with yourself first."

Pinkett Smith knows this first-hand, having been raised in by a single mother in Baltimore after her dad walked out when she was a baby. Even so, it's difficult to imagine how the famously happily wed Pinkett Smith might even begin to relate to such marital misery, given the common consensus that money can buy anything - even happiness.

"I can see how most people might feel that way because [extreme wealth] is a reality that a lot of people don't have, but I would actually say that the more that you have, the more is asked of you. And I would say that, in my experience, I've probably experienced more loss in the position that I'm in now than I had when I didn't have as much. The more you have, the more intense and more magnified life becomes.

"We all deal with loss on a daily basis. We deal with small losses; we deal with big losses. I'm 35 years old, so I've definitely had my share of loss and, you know, it's a part of going on with life; it's just learning how to cope with the idea of loss and to know that on the other side of that, there's rebirth, and that you can make the choice," she says.

If money is no protection against life's woes, then where does Pinkett Smith turn in times of trouble, having ruled out therapy as a cure-all? Perhaps she finds solace in Wicked Wisdom, the alt-metal rock band that she formed several years ago, frequently taking her kids with her on the tour bus.

Indeed, while many Hollywood couples shy away from working together, the Smiths seem to thrive on keeping it in the family. The elder Smiths portrayed a husband and wife in Ali, and their daughter Willow has recently completed filming the vampire flick I Am Legend with her father, following the success of big brother Jaden's father-and-son triumph in The Pursuit of Happyness.

"Working together on Ali was a fantastic experience," agrees Pinkett Smith. "We'd do it again in a heartbeat, but it's all about finding that right project that we would actually want to star in together again, and we haven't found that project yet."

With her 10th wedding anniversary coming up on 31 December, a healthy working relationship would seem to be just one more of Pinkett Smith's ingredients for a happy union. "I would say [that the key to] a successful marriage is basically the ideas of still being able to remain as individuals inside the union that we have. And communication. We talk about everything so that we very rarely argue.

"We have a wonderful marriage. We really enjoy each other and spend a lot of time enjoying each other. Will's imperfection is what makes him so perfect for me."

'Reign Over Me' opens on 20 April