Will Smith In Hitler Comment Drama

Will Smith has criticised celebrity gossip sites that claimed he had praised Hitler in a Scottish newspaper.

During an interview with The Daily Record, Smith had said, "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.' Stuff like that just needs reprogramming."

The writer interpreted it to mean that: "Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good." Dozens of celebrity gossip websites then picked up on the comment and claimed that Smith thinks Hitler was a "good" person.

The Jewish Defense League immediately pounced on Smith and released a statement saying his comments were "ignorant, detestable and offensive", "idiotic and insensitive" and "spit on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis." The lobbying group then went on to urge a boycott of his new film, I Am Legend, as well as asking that cinemas stop showing the film and that Hollywood executives shun him.

The rapper quickly issued his own statement, saying: "It is an awful and disgusting lie. It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet."

The Jewish Defense League has since made another statement calling off the boycotts, and have said that they don't think he's "a Jew-hater by any stretch of the imagination" but still insist that his comments "were offensive."