Word: foxx
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...Jamie Foxx, star of Ray, has received considerable Oscar buzz for his almost perfect portrayal of Ray Charles—and deservedly so. From the close-eyed, contorted face that seems to interpret the world with tactile emotion to the quick paced, pitch-perfect, squeaky southern drawl, Foxx has Charles dead on. But with a script devoid of any genuine emotion, and a filmmaker who isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, Foxx’s performance does not resonate. It bears a greater resemblance to a three hour-long impression rather than an Oscar...
Three years later, having changed his name from Eric Bishop to the gender-neutral Jamie Foxx (comedy-club owners at the time were booking women sight unseen), he landed on In Living Color, the sketch-comedy show that launched the careers of Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez and several dozen Wayanses. Foxx soon made a name for himself playing characters like Ugly Wanda on In Living Color, Crazy George on Roc and Bunz in Booty Call, a movie about a quest for condoms. (He also released an R&B album, Peep This, that he would like to forget.) But Foxx discovered...
...Foxx attributes the lack of good roles to a Hollywood slot system for black comics. "Will Smith has a slot," he says. "Martin Lawrence has a slot. Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, they all have slots. I needed to get a slot." (Foxx says this with no rancor; he believes white actors have it tougher because "there's so damn many of them.") He read for the Rod Tidwell role in Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise (for which Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar), but even after Oliver Stone gave him a breakout part as a rookie quarterback in Any Given...
Rather than smother a budding reputation, Foxx turned down every film role for a year. "I had something to fall back on," he says, referring to the lucrative stand-up tour he did in 2001. "But I believe that with acting, people will find you if you have talent. And I have talent." Sure enough, Michael Mann eventually saw Any Given Sunday and hired Foxx to play the worshipful corner man, Drew (Bundini) Brown, in Ali. He drew plaudits--and more bad scripts. Then Taylor Hackford called...
Life would be even better with an Academy Award nomination, and Foxx isn't shy about saying so. "You'd be stupid not to want that," he says. "It allows you to get better projects." If he were to win, he says the first and only person he'd thank would be his 95-year-old mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's but is otherwise healthy. He will not cry though. "I always tell people, do not cry on television, because they will run that over and over again. Who was the big black dude? Ving Rhames!" he shouts, making...