Jamie Foxx: Biography, Actor, Musician

Jamie Foxx Update: First Movie Since Hospitalization Releasing Friday

Actor Jamie Foxx will appear in the R-rated comedy Strays, which features him and Will Ferrell as the voices of two stray dogs. Coming to theaters on August 18, the movie marks Foxx’s first release since his April 2023 hospitalization due to an undisclosed medical emergency. Foxx publicly spoke about his hospitalization for the first time in July 2023, saying that he had been “to hell and back” and that he was grateful to be alive.

Who Is Jamie Foxx?

Born Eric Morlon Bishop, Jamie Foxx has emerged as one of the most diversely talented entertainers of his generation. Foxx started out on television as a cast member of In Living Color before landing his own sitcom in 1996. He then proved himself as a dramatic actor in 2004, for his performances in the thriller Collateral and the biopic Ray. The latter earned Foxx an Academy Award for his portrayal of Ray Charles. His other acclaimed roles include in Dreamgirls, Django Unchained, and Just Mercy. As a singer, Foxx has released five studio albums and won a Grammy Award for “Blame It.” Perhaps his most well-known musical success has been his 2005 hit collaboration with Kanye West on the song “Gold Digger.” In April 2023, Foxx was hospitalized for an undisclosed medical emergency but has recovered.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Eric Marlon Bishop
BORN: December 13, 1967
BIRTHPLACE: Terrell, Texas
CHILDREN: Corrine and Anelise
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius

Early Life

Jamie Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in Terrell, Texas, to Darrell Bishop and Louise Annette Talley Dixon. Darrell converted to Islam and renamed himself Shahid Abdula around the time of Foxx’s birth. His biological parents abandoned Foxx in his infancy, so his maternal grandparents adopted Foxx when he was less than a year old. He later told Oprah Winfrey, part of his dad’s decision to leave was religious. “He drew a line in the sand: ‘I’m a Muslim, and since you’re not, I can’t be your father,’” Foxx said in 2005. “During our last conversation, which was after my grandmother passed, I said, ‘Listen, I understand observing your religion, but is that worth missing out on your son’s life?’” Foxx has since reconciled with his parents, and Abdula has lived with him for years.

As a child, Foxx enjoyed sports and music. At Terrell High School, he played basketball and football, becoming the school’s first quarterback to pass for more than 1,000 yards. After graduation, Foxx won a classical piano scholarship to the U.S. International University in San Diego where he majored in music. “Going to that school was great for me,” Foxx told Oprah, “especially since I’d come from a world where Blacks and whites were separated by the town’s railroad tracks... But at the university, there were people from 81 different countries.”

It was during college that he was encouraged by friends to perform at a comedy club’s open mic night, and his career in entertainment began. He chose the stage name Jamie Foxx at this time. The last name is a tribute to the comedian Redd Foxx, and he chose the first name because he noticed female stand-up comedians were given top preference in lineups, so he hoped the gender-neutral name would give him a leg up.

Early Career: TV Show, 'Collateral,' and First Album

Leaving college, Foxx moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in comedy. In 1991, he was hired as a regular cast member on the TV variety show In Living Color. Foxx auditioned for the show at the famous Laugh Factory comedy club in West Hollywood, where cast members Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and David Alan Grier were in the audience. Foxx left In Living Color in 1994.

Two years later, he returned to television with The Jamie Foxx Show, playing a struggling Los Angeles actor who lives in a hotel owned by his aunt and uncle. Foxx co-created and produced the series through his company Foxxhole, and although it didn’t perform spectacularly in the ratings, it ran for five seasons and helped elevate Foxx’s career.

Foxx made his movie debut with Toys in 1992, alongside Robin Williams and Joan Cusack. Also during the 1990s, Foxx began professionally exploring his interest in music, releasing the album Peep This in 1994. With its traditional, smooth R&B sound, the album reached No. 12 on the R&B and hip-hop charts, with the song “Infatuation” attracting attention from listeners and radio stations.

Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx in the film Any Given Sunday (1999)

Despite earlier roles in The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) and The Players Club (1998), Foxx gained more attention for his first dramatic performance in Any Given Sunday (1998). The Oliver Stone–directed movie about a professional football team also starred Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, and Dennis Quaid. Foxx he drew upon his high school football experience and gave Pacino advice for how to perform during the famous monologue Pacino delivered to the team in a locker room.

His next notable film role was in Michael Mann’s Ali (2001), in which he played Drew Bundini Brown, the assistant trainer of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, played by Will Smith. Foxx later earned particular praise for his supporting performance opposite Tom Cruise in the Michael Mann thriller Collateral (2004), in which he played a taxi driver kidnapped by a hitman (Cruise) and forced to transport him to his hits over the course of one night. Roger Ebert wrote of the performance: “Jamie Foxx’s work is a revelation. I’ve thought of him in terms of comedy, but here he steps into a dramatic lead and is always convincing and involving.” For the role, Foxx was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award.

Academy Award for ‘Ray’

Foxx was launched to a new level of stardom after playing soul music pioneer Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic Ray. Foxx had to earn the approval of Charles, himself, before winning the role: The two played blues music for each other on two different pianos, after which Charles declared, “The kid’s got it.” Foxx lost 30 pounds for the role and even allowed his eyelids to be glued shut to simulate Charles’ blindness, a procedure that caused him to hyperventilate on set.

Jamie Foxx celebrates his Oscar win at the 77th Academy Awards in February 2005.

Foxx earned Best Actor wins at both the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, cementing his place on the Hollywood A-list. He thanked his late maternal grandmother during his memorable and emotional Oscar acceptance speech: “She still talks to me now, only now she talks to me in my dreams. And I can’t wait to go to sleep tonight because we got a lot to talk about. I love you.”

Continued Success: "Gold Digger," 'Django Unchained,' and Spider-Man Role

Following Ray, Foxx took an interesting array of roles with mixed results. The military action film Stealth (2005), with Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel, was a critical and financial dud. That same year, he garnered some critical praise for his turn as a marine serving in the Middle East in Jarhead, with Jake Gyllenhaal, but the movie failed to attract much of an audience.

Jamie Foxx and Kanye West perform at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards.

Foxx continued his music career as well, releasing a new album, Unpredictable. The recording reached the top of the pop, R&B, and hip-hop charts, driven by the title track single, “DJ Play a Love Song,” and “Can I Take You Home.” At the 2006 BET Awards, Foxx won Best Duet/Collaboration with Kanye West for his work on the single “Gold Digger.”

After teaming up with Colin Farrell for Michael Mann’s movie adaptation of the popular 1980s cop show Miami Vice (2006), Foxx co-starred in Dreamgirls (2006), with Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé, as a scheming car salesman who becomes a manager for R&B star James Thunder Early, played by Eddie Murphy. His character then transforms Early’s backup singers, the Dreamettes, into an all-female supergroup. The film is loosely based on the ’60s pop group the Supremes. Foxx was among the recipients of Outstanding Performance by a Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Foxx devoted much of his time in the late 2000s to his music career. He released his third album, Intuition, in 2008, which featured Kanye West and Lil Wayne, among others. The album’s second single, “Blame It,” hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The hit song also won Foxx his first and only Grammy for Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals. Then in 2010, he released a new album, Best Night of My Life.

Still, he maintained an onscreen presence with several roles, including in: the 2007 thriller The Kingdom; the 2010 romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, with Jessica Biel and Jennifer Garner; the 2011 workplace comedy Horrible Bosses, starring Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, and Kevin Spacey; and the animated children’s film Rio in 2012. He also portrayed Nathaniel Ayers in the drama The Soloist (2009), with Robert Downey Jr.

In late 2012, Foxx burst back into Hollywood spotlight with a leading role in Quentin Tarantino’s action western Django Unchained. He starred as Django, a former enslaved person who teams up with a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to find his wife (Kerry Washington) and face off against the plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) who has her captive. The cast also included Samuel L. Jackson and Jonah Hill. Foxx said it was a difficult and emotional shoot at times due to the film’s depiction of slavery, telling Entertainment Weekly, “It’s tough shooting when you’re in plantation row and that’s where your ancestors were persecuted and killed, and we were respectful of that.”

Foxx then co-starred in the 2013 action film White House Down as President Sawyer, opposite Channing Tatum. In 2014, he reprised earlier roles in Rio 2 and Horrible Bosses 2, played the villain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and took on the role of the Daddy Warbucks–like William Stacks for a remake of Annie. The next year, Foxx released his fifth studio album, Hollywood: A Story of a Dozen Roses.

Recent Movie Roles: 'Just Mercy' and 'Strays'

Jamie Foxx at the European premiere of Baby Driver on June 21, 2017 in London.

After taking a break from the screen, Foxx resurfaced in 2017 with the crime flicks Sleepless and Baby Driver. He played villain Leon “Bats” Jefferson in the latter film, which was directed by Edgar Wright, and co-starred Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, and Jon Hamm. Foxx based the Baby Driver character after a friend of his from his Los Angeles comedy club days.

Foxx appeared in a 2018 remake of Robin Hood as the title character’s trusted friend Little John. The following year, he delivered a strong performance in Just Mercy, based on the story of a Black pulpwood worker who was wrongfully convicted of the 1986 murder of a young white woman. Foxx said the starring role, opposite Michael B. Jordan, was especially meaningful to him given his father seven-year incarceration for $25 worth of illegal substances. The performance earned Foxx a Screen Actors Guild award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role.

In 2020, Foxx portrayed the leading voice role in the Pixar animated film Soul, portraying a disillusioned jazz musician who finds himself in a world of disembodied souls after falling into a coma. Foxx felt a personal connection with the project because his sister, who had Down’s syndrome, died the year of the film’s release, at age 36. Foxx said, “When you look at this film, it is exactly what I am now going through—the bittersweet [feeling] of losing someone but gaining a vision of joy.”

Next, Foxx reprised his role as Electro in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), a movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that saw the return of multiple actors portraying Spider-Man, including Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland. He’s slated for another comic book film in the long-anticipated Spawn, in which he will play the antihero title role. There is no release date yet for the film, which has yet to start production.

In August 2023, Foxx will appear in the R-rated comedy film Strays, which features him and Will Ferrell as the voices of two stray dogs who work together to seek revenge against a neglectful dog owner. Foxx recorded the performance before his recent health problems, and it will be his first film released since his hospitalization.

Personal Life: Daughters, Relationships, and Health

Corinne Foxx with her father, Jamie Foxx, at the Spider-Man: No Way Home Los Angeles premiere in December 2021

Foxx has two daughters. His first, actor and singer Corrine Foxx, was born to his then-girlfriend Connie Kline in 1994. His second daughter, Anelise, was born in 2019. In a 2017 interview with People, Foxx said of raising a daughter in Hollywood: “In this business, sometimes it can get crazy, but my daughter, she’s just incredible.”

However, Foxx has never married; he has said, “The traditional cookie-cutter lifestyle with the 2.5 children, the wood paneling on the station wagon and the cottage, I don’t think that was for me.” Still, he hasn’t shied away from romantic relationships. Foxx became involved with actor Katie Holmes sometime after her split from Tom Cruise in 2012, though they remained tight-lipped about their relationship for many years. In August 2019, it was reported that the couple had broken up.

Foxx has occasionally found himself in legal trouble. He was arrested in 2003 following an altercation with security guards at a New Orleans casino, ultimately drawing two years’ probation. In 2018, a woman accused the actor of attacking her after she refused to partake in sexual activity with him in 2002. Foxx called the allegations “absurd” and said he would pursue legal action against his accuser.

Most recently, Foxx made headlines when his daughter Corinne announced on April 12, 2023, that the Academy Award winner had been hospitalized due to an undisclosed medical emergency. Despite media reports and social media rumors that Foxx was gravely ill, Corinne announced the next month that he had been released from the hospital and was recovering. Foxx publicly spoke about his hospitalization for the first time in July 2023, saying that he had been “to hell and back” and that he was grateful to be alive.

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Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.

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