Will Smith Thinks Social Media Killed the Movie Star

Huffington Post asked the "Bright" star Friday at Comic-Con about a bungee-jumping selfie that went viral, due to a bearded Smith's resemblance to Uncle Phil from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." His answer was less about the picture and more about how the way fans view celebrities is changing with technology.

"It is such a new world," Smith said. "I released my first record in '86, so I'm over 30 years in the business. My first album there were no CDs, so it wasn't until my second album, and they came like these hot new things called CDs. Seeing that transition, essentially the fans being more and more involved in the creative process. In terms of movie stars, it's a huge difference. It's like you almost can't make new movie stars anymore."

Smith thinks that social media has eliminated the distance between fans and celebrities, therefore eliminating the mystique Hollywood stars used to enjoy.

"It's like there's a certain amount of privacy and there was a certain amount of distance that you had from the audience, and only on July 4th did you have access. So that amount of access created this bigger-than-life kind of thing," he said. "But in the shift into this new world, it's almost like a friendship with the fans. The relationship is less like the time of Madonna, Michael Jackson, when you could make the Tom Cruise these gigantic figures, because you can't create that anymore. The shift is to 'we're best friends,' and that's like with the comments and with those pictures and all that."

In addition to his resemblance to deceased TV star James Avery, fans also noticed a picture of Smith with a mustache looked strikingly familiar to another image from his '90s sitcom days.

Though he spent little time commenting oh how the comparisons to Uncle Phil actually made him feel, he address the stache he grew for "Bright."

"The mustache! I hated that mustache. That was so bad," Smith said.