Jamie Foxx biography
Jamie Foxx is an American actor and singer, comic and Academy Award recipient. He got incredibly famous after his star performance in Ray, as well as appearance in such blockbusters as Collateral, Law Abiding Citizen, Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino, The Amazing Spiderman 2 etc.
Early life and childhood
Jamie Foxx (born as Eric Marlon Bishop) was born on December 13, 1967 in Terrell, Texas. He lived with his biological parents Louise Annette Talley Dixon and stockbroker Darrell Bishop (who took name Shahid Abdula after converting to Islam) for just around 7 months. They abandoned Eric and took no part in his upbringing.
Foxx was raised by his mother’s adopted parents – harsh, strict, religious and hardworking nurse and yard worker, 60 years old Esther Marie and Mark Talley. Jamie himself considers life lessons, given by his grandmother, to be one of the reasons of his success. There was an impressive big library in his adoptive parents’ home. Early in his life, Eric showed quite an interest to reading; grandmother noticed this and worked hard on inspiring future actor to have confidence that he is a clever, smart kid and is more than capable to achieve whatever he wants in life.
Esther wasn’t the one to let her grandson to dawdle. At grandmother’s insistence, 3 years old Foxx started to practice piano. In his teens he became a vocalist, pianist and choir leader in Terrell’s Baptist church and sung in Leather and Lace band. Another Eric’s innate talent became apparent during his time in primary school; he was a center of attention among his peers, had a great sense of humor and kept an audience entertained. If that wasn’t enough, Foxx played basketball and football; he broke many schools records, showed great promise and aspired to play for his local Dallas Cowboys. Later on he became a boy scout.
Despite his grandmother’s care and dedication to him, boy couldn’t stop asking himself why did his real parents abandoned him? It took half a lifetime to realize that they never actually wanted a child.
I often wondered, why? I wasn’t that kind of kid who always gets into some trouble. In fact, I was the opposite. I even was a midfielder in my high school football team! My real father lived but a 45 kilometers away from me and never cared enough to talk or visit.
In 2014 Jamie decided to reestablish his relationship with real parents. Actor found them and even took his mother to live with him. Unfortunately, he still failed to find common ground with his father.
Movie and TV career
Eric’s passion for music eventually took over his ambition to become a professional athlete. After graduating from high school he received honorary scholarship to United States International University, where he studied musical and performing arts.
First real stage experience Eric acquired only in 1989, when he took part in open mic show in local comedy bar on a bet with his friend. He noticed, that women comedians are the first to be invited to the stage, hence he took an alias Jamie Foxx since this name is gender-neutral. Surname though, he choose in honor of legendary comedian Redd Foxx.
Two years later Jamie joined the cast of sketch-comedy show In Living Color and appeared in TV series Roc. He made his big screen debut in 1992 comedy movie Toys, joining the cast of many Hollywood legends such as Robin Williams, Joan Cusack and Robin Wright.
Artist noticed, that women comedian are the first to be invited to the stage, hence he took an alias Jamie Foxx since this name is gender-neutral
Django Unchained and new turn in career
In 2012 Foxx was invited to star in new Quentin Tarantino project Django Unchained based on a story about an Afro-American slave, turned headhunter and slave-owner’s bane. In interviews actor admitted, that filming of a movie was incredibly hard emotionally and made him ponder about the suffering of his ancestors a lot. His own early life was not a pretty either; he grew up in Texas, which is up to this day, along with other south states, notorious for the persistence of racial stereotypes. Needless to say that in 70’s, when Jamie was but a kid, situation was even worse.
Reading Tarantino’s bloody and violent script, Jamie perfectly understood that reality was even more horrifying. His extensive knowledge of American slavery history served actor well during the filming of a movie. I said to Tarantino that there is no better actor to take the role, since only I can rely on my personal experience in the matter, recalls Foxx. Perhaps that is why, despite the impressive list of candidates to take on a role of Django, which included Will Smith, Terrence Howard, Idris Elba and Chris Tucker, Tarantino chose Jamie Foxx.
Filming of a movie took a toll on Jamie; it was extremely mentally exhausting to portray a slave. During the scene of the torture of Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) he even broke out in tears.
Movie also featured Jamie’s own horse called Cheetah.
In 2013 Jamie Foxx starred as President James Sawyer in action thriller White House Down alongside Channing Tatum and James Woods and followed it up with an appearance in The Amazing Spider Man 2 where he was cast as super villain Electro and musical drama Annie, produced by Will Smith and Jay Z.
In 2017 Foxx appeared in thriller movie Sleepless and action Baby Driver along with Ansel Elgort and Lily James.
Musical career
In 1994 Jamie released his first studio album «Peep This», which was not commercially successful. He returned to the music only 10 years later, featured on one of the songs of rapper Twista called Slow Jamz alongside Kanye West. Song reached #1 on the USA Billboard Hot-100 chart and #3 on the UK Singles chart.
At that point nobody had any doubts about Foxx musical talent. He joined Kanye for a second on Gold Digger song, where he performed a piece of Ray Charles famous I Got a Woman composition; single reached first place at Billboard Hot 100 remained on top of it for 10 straight weeks.
At the end of 2005 Jamie put out his second studio album Unpredictable, that quickly achieved status of double platinum. This period in time also marked with his brilliant collaborations with R&B-singer Mary J. Blige, and rappers Ludacris and Field Mob.
At the beginning of 2007 Jamie launched The Foxxhole channel, based on Sirius Satellite Radio, which broadcasted various talk shows, comedy sketches and promoted Afro-American musicians as well as Jamie’s own music.
In 2008 Jamie released his third album Intuition, featuring Kanye West, T.I., Ne-Yo, Lil 'Kim and T-Pain. Music video on «Blame It», one of the song from the album, involved cameos from such established stars as Forest Whitaker, Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Howard and Quincy Jones.
By 2010 Jamie Foxx had already released four studio albums
Starting with May 2017 Foxx became a host and executive producer of TV game show Beat Shazam.
Personal life
In 2004 Jamie had 13 month long affair with American actress Leila Arcieri. Later on, he started a relationship with actress and fashion designer Christina Milian. Other famous partners of Foxx were models Sky Nellor and Dominika Simon, writer Nikki Giavasis and actress Stacey Dash.
Last several years Jamie is committed to relationship with American actress Katie Holmes. Couple thoroughly hid their relationship, despite the fact that it started right after Holmes divorce with Tom Cruise back in 2012. For a long time they had to come up with various explanations about the nature of their relationship; Foxx and Holmes decided to publicly come out as pair only around October 2018.
Jamie Foxx is a father of two daughters, Corinne (1994) and Annalise (2009), both from his previous relationships. Katie Holmes daughter Suri (2006) is under a custody of her mother and perfectly gets along with Jamie.
In summer 2018 woman, that preferred to remain anonymous, claimed that actor sexually harassed her. Allegedly, incident took place at the party, where Foxx tried to get her to perform oral sex. When she refused to do so, some of Jamie’s friends kicked her out of the house. Foxx fervently denied the claims and aims to pursue legal action against his accuser.
Jamie Foxx now
Jamie Foxx has many plans for the future. In 2018 alone he is known to be part of at least 6 projects, including adventure movie Robin Hood, where he appears as the closest friend and mentor of noble scoundrel, portrayed by (Taron Egerton). He also works on his own comedy film All-Star Weekend and is cast to star in biographical drama movie Just Mercy based on the story about worldwide famous human rights attorney (said to be portrayed by Michael B. Jordan) Another upcoming release starring Jamie Foxx is a remake of comic book adaptation Spawn.
