One is still the loneliest number

Last year, they shut down New York for a few hours so Will Smith could be alone.
It came neither easy nor cheap, snarling traffic and making more than a few people very angry in the process. But one busy Monday morning in October 2006, a production crew for the sci-fi drama "I Am Legend" cordoned off several blocks of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and completely depopulated the area so the Oscar-nominated star of "Ali" could be filmed walking cautiously down one of the city's most traveled arteries in total solitude -- his surroundings utterly and perfectly still.
"That was aggressive. I don't think anyone's going to be able to do that in New York again any time soon," Smith said, breaking into a wide grin at the memory. "People were not happy. That's the most middle fingers I've ever gotten in my career."
Nobody said it was going to be easy portraying the last man on Earth -- a military scientist who survives a biological pandemic that has apparently turned the rest of humanity into night-crawling vampire zombies. Over the previous 12 years, a panoply of A-list actors have been attached to the role -- notably Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas and Arnold Schwarzenegger -- but until Smith came along, none could shepherd the high-concept project into production.

Sticking Point A: The "Legend" protagonist is an island unto himself, spending his daylight hours trying to concoct an antidote to vampirism and retiring to his locked and loaded Greenwich Village brownstone at night when the freaks come out for blood. That means, for much of the movie -- even when backdropped by quintessential Big Apple locations including Washington Square Park and Times Square -- he's the last man on-screen.

Smith has bumped up against the apocalypse in movies before, battling legions of murderous androids in "I, Robot" and intercepting marauding aliens set on conquering Earth in "Independence Day." "Legend," however, represents a risk for one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Reportedly budgeted at more than $100 million, it's a big-budget one-man show in which he's seen emoting opposite a dog, various mannequins and computer-generated monsters. Think "Castaway" meets "28 Days Later."

"It is an extremely delicate balancing act -- not going too far one way or another," Smith said, dripping with movie blood now on the set of his postmodern superhero flick "Hancock." "The second you have one too many explosions, one music cue a little too high, you destroy it. You lose it all.