Jamie Foxx
Jamie Foxx, born Eric Bishop, is a highly accomplished American actor, musician, and comedian known for his versatility across various entertainment mediums. He was adopted at a young age and showed early talent in music and sports, becoming a church choir leader and a standout quarterback in high school. After moving to San Diego for a piano scholarship, Foxx transitioned to Los Angeles to pursue a career in comedy, where he adopted his stage name to gain more opportunities. He gained fame through television, particularly with his role on "In Living Color" and later starred in "The Jamie Foxx Show," which became a significant hit.
Foxx's film career took off with notable performances, including his Oscar-winning role as Ray Charles in "Ray," which showcased his dedication to his craft. He is one of the few artists to succeed in film, music, and television, earning multiple awards, including Grammy and Academy Awards. Foxx’s music career flourished with chart-topping collaborations and albums, further establishing him as a multifaceted entertainer. His recent work includes roles in major films like "Django Unchained" and animated features like "Soul." Overall, Jamie Foxx's journey reflects his ability to bridge diverse genres and appeal to a wide audience while building on the legacy of Black American entertainers.
Jamie Foxx
Actor
- Born: December 13, 1967
- Birthplace: Terrell, Texas
Actor, comedian, and musician
A talented and versatile entertainer, Foxx attained success as a comedian, actor, and musician, and in so doing he expanded opportunities for other Black American entertainers.
Areas of achievement: Entertainment: comedy; Film: acting; Music: rhythm and blues; Radio and television
Early Life
Jamie Foxx was born Eric Bishop, the son of stockbroker Shaheed Abdullah and Louise Annette Talley. When Foxx was seven months old, he was adopted by Louise’s parents, Estelle and Mark Talley. Estelle encouraged her grandson to read and to take piano lessons, and she believed he was destined for greatness. Foxx did not disappoint her; he led the church choir when he was fifteen and was the first quarterback from his Texas high school to pass for more than one thousand yards. Despite these accomplishments, Foxx later told interviewers he was bullied and experienced a great deal of discrimination in Texas.
Foxx moved to San Diego in 1986 after he won a piano scholarship to attend United States International University. He often spent his weekends in Los Angeles, where he tried to obtain a recording contract and to perform in comedy clubs. As part of his comedy routine, he did impersonations of Mike Tyson, Bill Cosby, and Ronald Reagan. Foxx eventually dropped out of college, moved to Los Angeles, and continued to perform stand-up comedy. After he noticed that comedy club owners were more likely to book women then men, he changed his name to the gender-neutral Jamie Foxx, in the hope he would be mistaken for a woman and given a chance to perform.
Life’s Work
In 1991, Foxx joined the cast of In Living Color, a television sketch-comedy program on which he was best known for playing Wanda, a woman whose high opinion of her looks was not shared by the men she dated. Foxx appeared on this program until 1994; during his last season, he also portrayed Crazy George on the television series Roc. From 1996 to 2001, he starred in The Jamie Foxx Show, a situation comedy that became the highest-rated series on the WB (Warner Bros.) network.
While enjoying success in television, Foxx was having less luck with his recording career. Peep This (1994), an undistinguished rhythm-and-blues album on which he performed and for which he wrote the songs, was released in 1994. He also landed forgettable roles in several films, including Toys (1992), The Great White Hype(1996), Booty Call (1997), andAny Given Sunday (1999).
Foxx first attracted critical notice as a film actor when he played Muhammad Ali’s trainer, Drew “Bundini” Brown, in Ali (2001). Lightning struck twice in 2004, when he costarred with Tom Cruise in Collateral and played Ray Charles in Ray. To prepare for the role of Charles, Foxx met the blind musician and then played a videotape of their meeting in an endless loop for six weeks. Foxx also lost forty pounds, learned Charles’s piano-playing technique, and wore prosthetic eyelids that blinded him. Critics described his performance in Ray as “flawless,” and a slew of award nominations soon followed. In 2005, Foxx became the eleventh actor and the first Black American to be nominated for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Academy Awards in the same year; he won the Academy Award for Ray, as well as more than twenty other acting honors for this film. Foxx followed Ray with performances in Miami Vice (2006), Dreamgirls (2006), The Soloist (2008), and Valentine’s Day (2010), among other films.
At the same time, Foxx’s music career went into high gear. In 2004 and 2005, he collaborated on two songs with rapper-producer Kanye West that reached number one on the Billboard charts. His second album, Unpredictable (2005), also rose to number one; it eventually was certified double platinum. As a result, Foxx became the fourth entertainer—after Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Barbra Streisand—to garner both an Academy Award for acting and a number-one album. In 2007, Foxx launched the Foxxhole, his own channel on Sirius Satellite Radio which aired his talk-radio variety show, as well as programs by other Black Americans. “Blame It,” a duet with singer T-Pain that was included on Foxx’s 2008 album Intuition, won several awards, including the 2010 Grammy for Best Rhythm and Blues Performance by a Duo or Group. Foxx’s fourth album, Best Night of My Life, was released in December 2010.
In 2012 Foxx starred in the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained. In 2014 he took on the role of the villain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. That same year, he returned to his musical roots, playing Will Stacks, the Daddy Warbucks character in an updated version of the musical Annie. He played the role of Walter McMillian, a prisoner wrongly convicted of murder, in Just Mercy (2019), a film based on the memoir of the same name, and he voiced the main character of Joe in the Pixar animated film Soul (2020). After reprising his role as Electro for 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, the same year in which he put out the nonfiction book Act Like You Got Some Sense: And Other Things My Daughters Taught Me, he starred in the action-comedy Day Shift in 2022, served as part of the ensemble cast of They Cloned Tyrone (2023), lent his voice to one of the main canine characters in the live-action adventure-comedy Strays (2023), and costarred with Tommy Lee Jones in the drama The Burial (2023).
Significance
Foxx is one of the few performers who has attained success in every area of entertainment—film, music, television and radio, and live shows. He was not a pioneer, but he was able to build on the previous efforts of other Black American entertainers in order to sustain a multifaceted career and to attract diverse audiences.
Bibliography
Dougherty, Terri. Jamie Foxx. San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books, 2006. Print.
Dougherty, Terri. “The O Interview: Oprah Talks to Jamie Foxx.” Interview by Oprah Winfrey. O: The Oprah Magazine (December, 2005): 254. Print.
Foxx, Jamie. "Jamie Foxx on the 'Bittersweet' Just Mercy, His Own Father's Unjust Incarceration and Why He's Never Been for the Death Penalty." Interview by Antonia Blyth. Deadline, 18 Nov. 2019, deadline.com/2019/11/just-mercy-jamie-foxx-michael-b-jordan-interview-news-1202787637/. Accessed 21 July 2021.
Kennedy, Gerrick. "On the Next Episode of The Jamie Foxx Show . . ." Men's Health, 8 Sept. 2021, www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a37319129/jamie-foxx-book-interview/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2023.
Todd, Anne M. Jamie Foxx. New York: Chelsea, 2008. Print.
Tyrangiel, Josh. “The Art of Being a Confidence Man.” Time (October 18, 2004): 76-81. Print.