Will Smith talks to Ellie Genower about acting without a co-star in his latest film I Am Legend and what it was like working with his daughter on screen.

PICTURE the scene. Fifth Avenue in New York, normally buzzing with traffic, people and noise, is silent and empty. Only one man is alive and walking the streets of this once-vibrant city, now in ruin and disrepair. And that man is Will Smith. Well, actually it's Will Smith's character Robert Neville in his new movie I Am Legend, where he plays the last man on Earth.

A man-made virus has wiped out most of the population, and turned the rest into rabid humans, known as The Infected - monsters with a hunger for blood, who lurk in the city's shadows. As a result, Will is left playing a character who, for more than half of the film, is left to act by himself with only a dog for company.

Will said: "It was such a wonderful exploration of myself because you are in this situation where you don't have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to.

"You start creating the stimulus and response so there is a connection with yourself. In those types of situations, you learn things about yourself you never would have even imagined."

Will prepared for his lonely role by talking to men who had undergone solitary confinement, including former prisoners of war.

"They told me the first thing is a schedule," Will said.

"You will not survive in solitary if you don't schedule everything. You plan things like cleaning your nails. They'll take two hours cleaning them, because it's on the schedule."

The film sees Will's character take a lonely walk through one of New York's busiest districts, when the film crew had to shut down six of the city's major streets on a Monday morning.

He said: "Shooting in New York is difficult. I would say percentage-wise, it's the most amount of middle fingers I've ever received.

"I'm used to people liking me. I was starting to think F-you was my name."

Many actors would have baulked at the idea of having to occupy the majority of a blockbuster movie's screen time with just a dog for company.

But the movie, which is based on Richard Matheson's iconic 1954 novel, has been on Will's mind for several years.

He said: "I really connect to the idea of the collective unconscious. There are things that we all dream, things beyond language.

"To me, the movie is one of those concepts, which is why it has stayed with me this long."

For the second time in his movie career, one of Will's children - this time seven-year-old Willow - joins him on screen, playing his daughter in flashback scenes at the beginning of the movie.

"You don't work with Willow, you work for Willow," laughed Will, who is also dad to Jayden, 11, with his second wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith.

Proud dad Will reckons his kids have already developed two very different attitudes to showbusiness.

He said: "Jayden is Johnny Depp. He just wants to do good work. He doesn't care what money he gets, he doesn't care what people see or don't see. He loves acting and wants to make good movies. Willow is Paris Hilton. She wants to be on TV. So we are managing both of those in our household."

I Am Legend is out now.