Hollywood action hero Will Smith decided to swim with sharks in a new TV special after being terrified of water for most of his life The 51-year-old movie tough-guy admitted he only learnt to swim in his forties due to the fear. He claimed his water phobia started when he was very young and blamed classic movie ???Jaws??? for his terror. He said:??? I blame Steven Spielberg. I was literally scared in the bathtub. I literally felt like a shark could come out of the spout.??? So Will decided to learn to scuba dive before going to swim with sharks in the Bahamas in the Discovery channel special ???Will Smith: Off the Deep End.??? Will enlisted the help of former military veteran Paul de Gelder - who lost an arm and a leg to a nine-foot bull shark during an elite diving training mission A trip to the Bahamas was organized, de Gelder handpicked his own shark feeders, shark wranglers, and camera people for the telly adventure. Will said:??? God placed the greatest things in life on the other side of your biggest fears. "The ocean's alive. The ocean is moving and changing and adjusting and reacting and responding. The ocean is talking to you the whole time and you're hoping it's not saying something you don't want to hear." In the special ??" which is part of Discovery???s annual ???Shark Week??? ??" Will confronts his fear of the open seas and the open jaws of nature???s fiercest predators. Smith documented a series of dives, culminating with a terrifying swim with a tiger shark. He claimed the experience has changed him for good. He insisted:??? There was Will Smith before the sharks and there is Will Smith after the sharks.???