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Producer · Actor · Director · Writer

1967-12-13 · Terrell, Texas, USA · Male

52 series in the catalog

Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, comedian, singer, and film producer. He gained his career breakthrough as a featured player in the sketch comedy show In Living Color from 1991 to 1994. Following this success, he was given his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show, in which he starred, co-created and produced from 1996 to 2001.

Foxx received acclaim for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the film Ray (2004), winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. That same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the crime film Collateral. He gained further prominence for his film roles in Ali (2001), Jarhead (2005), Dreamgirls (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Horrible Bosses (2011), Django Unchained (2012), Annie (2014), Baby Driver (2017), and Soul (2020). He also played Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Walter McMillian in Just Mercy (2019).

Foxx also embarked on a successful career as an R&B singer in the 2000s. He earned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, with his features on the singles "Slow Jamz" by Twista alongside Kanye West, and "Gold Digger" by the latter. His single "Blame It" won him the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Four of his five studio albums have charted in the top ten of the U.S. Billboard 200: Unpredictable (2005), which topped the chart, Intuition (2008), Best Night of My Life (2010), and Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses (2015). Since 2017, Foxx has served as the host and executive producer of the Fox game show Beat Shazam. In 2021, he wrote his autobiography Act Like You Got Some Sense.

Early life

Eric Marlon Bishop was born on December 13, 1967, in Terrell, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Foxx is the son of Darrell Bishop (renamed Shahid Abdula following his conversion to Islam), who sometimes worked as a stockbroker, and Louise Annette Talley Dixon. Shortly after his birth, Foxx was adopted and raised by his great aunt and uncle, likewise his mother's adoptive parents, Esther Marie (née Nelson), a domestic worker and nursery operator, and Mark Talley, a yard worker. He has had little contact with his birth parents, who were not a major part of his upbringing, but he has been publicly photographed with them on occasion. He was raised in the black quarter of Terrell, which at the time was a racially segregated community. He has often acknowledged his grandmother's influence as one of the greatest reasons for his success.

Foxx began playing the piano when he was five years old. He had a strict Baptist upbringing and as a teenager was a part-time pianist and choir leader in Terrell's New Hope Baptist Church. His natural talent for telling jokes was already in evidence as a third grader, when his teacher used him as a reward: if the class behaved well, Foxx would tell them jokes. He attended Terrell High School, where he received top grades and played basketball and football (as quarterback). His ambition was to play for the Dallas Cowboys, and he was the first player in the school's history to pass for more than 1,000 yards. He also sang in a band called Leather and Lace. After high school, Foxx received a scholarship to United States International University, where he studied classical piano, music theory, and composition.

Career

1989–2003: Standup, sitcom, and acting debut

In 1989, Foxx began attending a local comedy club's open mic night, after a girlfriend's dare. He found that female comedians were often called first to perform, so he chose the stage name of Jamie Foxx, which was ambiguous enough to disallow any biases, and his stage surname in deference to popular Black, 1970s comedian Redd Foxx. Foxx joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991, his recurrent character Wanda named in homage of Redd's dear friend and co-worker LaWanda Page. Following a recurring role in the comedy-drama sitcom Roc, Foxx went on to star in his own sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, from 1996 to 2001, which he also co-created and produced through his company Foxx Hole Productions and was aired on the WB network. He portrayed Jamie King and uncredited performances of reporter Tyrone Koppel.

Foxx made his film debut in the 1992 comedy Toys.

In 1994, Foxx released an album (on the Fox record label) entitled Peep This, which was not commercially successful.

His first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone's 1999 film Any Given Sunday, where he was cast as a hard-partying quarterback, partly because of his own football background. During filming, Foxx he often butted heads with costar LL Cool J.

In 2001, Foxx starred opposite Will Smith in Michael Mann's biographical drama Ali. Three years later, Foxx played taxi driver Max Durocher in the Mann film noir Collateral alongside Tom Cruise, for which he received outstanding reviews. Critic Roger Ebert praised Foxx's performance, stating that, "Jamie Foxx's work is a revelation. I've thought of him in terms of comedy ("Booty Call", "Breakin' all the Rules"), but here he steps into a dramatic lead and is always convincing and involving". He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.

2003–2006: Career stardom

In 2003, Foxx featured on the rapper Twista's song, "Slow Jamz", together with Kanye West, which reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and on the UK Singles chart. His second collaboration with Kanye West, "Gold Digger", in which Foxx sang the Ray Charles-influenced "I Got a Woman" hook, then went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining there for 10 weeks. In 2005, Foxx featured on the single "Georgia" by Atlanta rappers Ludacris and Field Mob, which sampled Ray Charles' hit "Georgia on My Mind".

Foxx also portrayed Ray Charles in the biographical film Ray (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Foxx is the third male in history (after Barry Fitzgerald and Al Pacino) to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, Collateral and Ray. In 2005, Foxx was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Foxx released his second studio album, Unpredictable, in December 2005. It debuted at No. 2, selling 598,000 copies in its first week, rising to No. 1 the following week and selling an additional 200,000 copies. To date, the album has sold 1.98 million copies in the United States, and was certified double Platinum by the RIAA. The album also charted on the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at No. 9. Foxx became the fourth artist to have both won an Academy Award for an acting role and to have achieved a No. 1 album in the U.S., joining Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Barbra Streisand.

Foxx's first single from the album, the title track "Unpredictable" (featuring Ludacris), peaked in the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles and also made the UK Top 20 singles chart; the track samples "Wildflower" by New Birth. The second U.S. single from the album was "DJ Play a Love Song", which reunited Foxx with Twista. In the UK, the second single was "Extravaganza", which saw Foxx once again collaborate with Kanye West, although Foxx did not feature in the song's music video.

At the 2006 BET Awards, Foxx won Best Duet/Collaboration with Kanye West for "Gold Digger" and tied with Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You" for Video of the Year. On December 8, 2006, Foxx received four Grammy Award nominations, which included Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for Love Changes featuring Mary J. Blige, Best R&B Album for Unpredictable, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for Georgia by Ludacris & Field Mob featuring Jamie Foxx, and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for Unpredictable featuring Ludacris.

Following on from these successes, Foxx went on to appear in the box-office hits Jarhead, Miami Vice, and Dreamgirls, which lifted his profile even higher…