Rex Smith took many a young girls breath away as he became an overnight star after his “You Take My Breath Away” made it on the No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Rex’s band was taking him places and soon he became every teen’s idol. He basically ruled the 70s with his phenomenal performances.
He made his Broadway debut with Grease, starred in the action series Street Hawk, and of course, his role on Sooner or Later launched him as a mega star.
Undoubtedly, there were highlights in his life that he can never forget. But these were his professional high points. About his personal life, fans know that he is divorced and a father of two. In the year 1997, as Rex was performing Sunset Boulevard on stage, his eyes fell on a young boy in the audience. The boy was not only intently listening to Rex, but also looking at him with an acute focus. In fact, Rex had previously spotted the boy at other performance as well.
Recalling the time, Smith said in the video, Oprah: Where Are They Now? “Wherever I go, he’s following me. His eyes are burning through me.” Once Rex opened himself to fans to sign autographs, the boy came up to him and Rex said, “You seem like a very intense young man. Are you interested in the arts?”
Right after posing the question, Rex looked into the boy’s face and went numb for a while. “I knew I was looking into the eyes of my firstborn son. I almost fainted,” Smith recalls.
That 16 year old boy was none other than his own son whom he fathered after a one night stand with Karen Lakey. She was battling cancer at the time and before it was too late, she told her son, Brandon, the truth about his birth father. Obviously Brandon was skeptical about it because his mother was on morphine and anyway it was too big a thing to digest immediately. However, when he took some time and looked at a picture, he saw the unmistakable familiarity in their features.
Credits: oprah.com huffingtonpost.com