Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The Smiths at home

The Smiths, for all their bonhomie in public, remain a private couple. They rarely go out, opting for nights at home watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel or playing Monopoly or Crazy Eights. Perhaps Pinkett Smith and Willow might bake a cake or sugar cookies.

"(It’s) a whole lot of kids and a whole lot of just sitting around and kicking it," Pinkett Smith says. "We’re a pretty boring crowd."

The secret to their nearly nine-year union is a mix of the sexy and the cerebral, she says. "La Perla (lingerie) and communication. Gotta keep it right in the bedroom and keep talking, and that will handle everything," says Pinkett Smith.

As parents, the Smiths view themselves as guides rather than disciplinarians.

"We feel that we are partners in their life, but they are responsible for their lives," Smith says. "Something we noticed in our upbringing and specifically in the black community coming out of slavery in the United States - children were dealt with in the master-slave relationship. We’re trying to break the cycle of ’beat them when they do something wrong.’ If you get them used to a master-slave relationship, when they leave your home, they’re going to be looking for a master. We want them to be looking for partners."

They’re home-schooling their three kids.

"There are specific things we think our children need to know that aren’t necessarily covered in the industrial-era traditional education," Smith says as his wife nods. "First and foremost is their ability to communicate with people. The quality of your relationships and the quality of the groups of which you are a member are more important than the Pythagorean theorem could ever be."

Smith gets ever more impassioned. "I’m 38 years old, and I’m just getting an understanding of what life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness means," he says. "Kids need to know that in kindergarten. They need to be interacting with one another in a way that will further their group and their individual ability to survive."

He’s friends with vocal Scientologist Tom Cruise and attended Cruise’s wedding in Italy. Although Smith has learned about the controversial religion, he has not converted to it. He says he’s a connoisseur of all faiths.

"I want to go on the hajj to Mecca," Smith says. "I don’t believe in religious separatism. I love people, and I don’t believe that the twin towers getting knocked down means all Muslims are bad.

"I was raised in a resurrection Baptist church in Philadelphia, and my grandmother was a devout member of the church. The things that I believe are 90% morally what I learned growing up. But the additions that Jada and I have made - we’ve traveled around the world."

They have been "to India, and United Arab Emirates, and to Jordan and to Jerusalem. We are students of world religions."

He believes in the "power of the individual, of the human spirit to overcome."

That’s why you won’t catch him playing a morally bankrupt Hannibal Lecter-type serial killer anytime soon.

"It’s the reason I’m attracted to happy endings. I really believe you can do that, you can will that into existence."