News of his hospitalization prompted an outpouring of support from his fans.
This is the story of musician, comedian, and Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx.
This is the story of musician, comedian, and Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx.
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00:00I will give you comedy beyond your richness.
00:02I ain't playin' my drum for real.
00:05I'm out here in Greece.
00:08Once called the entertainer of our era,
00:10Jamie Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in 1967 in Texas.
00:15As a child, he was adopted and raised by his mother's adoptive parents.
00:19My grandmother made sure I had every opportunity
00:22to cultivate the talents that I had.
00:24Coming up by myself, I didn't have a crew.
00:26You know, my grandmother was my crew.
00:27When Foxx wasn't playing sports,
00:29he spent a lot of time in church,
00:31where he began to play the piano at five.
00:33By the time he was a teen,
00:34he was a part-time church pianist and choir leader.
00:37I had an adopted brother who was just a few years older than me,
00:41and he started playing the piano,
00:42and he would play, and everybody would sit around,
00:44and I said, ooh, I want to do that.
00:46After high school, he won a scholarship to study music and composition
00:50at United States International University.
00:52It was during this time that he began honing his comedic chops,
00:55apparent since he was just a child.
00:57My teacher, Miss Reeves, God bless her.
00:59Every Friday, she would say, listen, you keep getting in trouble.
01:02I'm going to let you do jokes every Friday for the class,
01:05so that way you don't get kicked out of school.
01:07And I would just tell jokes from the Carson Show.
01:11In 1989, Foxx performed his first open mic night at a comedy club,
01:15accepting a girlfriend's dare.
01:17When he discovered that women comedians
01:19were more often than not called to perform first,
01:21he chose a stage named Jamie,
01:23which he thought was ambiguous enough to prevent bias.
01:26Foxx was in honor of one of his comedic inspirations,
01:30Check one, two.
01:31I would do on the other side of the street,
01:33when they walk out, where's Les Snipes?
01:35One day, Denzel Washington
01:39walked out that joint, and I sprinted across.
01:41I breached security.
01:44Foxx moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment
01:47and got his big break in the sketch comedy show, In Living Color.
01:50I hope he ain't ugly, because I can't stand no ugly man.
01:54You can do what you want to do, in living color.
01:58Next, Foxx diversified his Hollywood credits,
02:01And action.
02:03making his big screen debut in 1992's Toys
02:06and releasing his first album, Keep This, in 1994.
02:10Oh baby, baby let's experiment, experiment.
02:17The jack-of-all-entertainment trade
02:18got his biggest break yet starring in his own sitcom,
02:21The Jamie Foxx Show, from 1996 to 2001.
02:25He also served as co-creator and producer
02:27for his production company, Foxx Hole Productions.
02:30You know the little monkey from Outbreak?
02:31Yeah, he bit me.
02:34Yeah, he bit me. I don't want you to catch this, girl.
02:37The stuff that was going on behind the scenes
02:39was a whole nother show.
02:41Oh, really?
02:41Yeah, because we do the show, then when they go to commercial,
02:44my boy Speedy, he's been telling jokes for 30 years.
02:46He's telling jokes, people bagging on each other,
02:48people singing, the whole nine.
02:49Foxx set his sights even higher,
02:51making waves on the big screen with films like The Players Club,
02:55Any Given Sunday, Ali, and Collateral alongside Tom Cruise.
02:59His musical breakthrough followed soon after,
03:01with appearances on slow jams with Twista in 2003
03:04and Kanye West's 2005 smash hit, Gold Digger.
03:08Oh, she's a gold digger.
03:10Way over time.
03:12That digs on me.
03:14The single went straight to No. 1 on the Billboard 100
03:18and remained there for 10 weeks.
03:20Foxx received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Ray Charles in Rain,
03:23winning the 2005 Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
03:27Foxx, who was able to work with Charles for the film,
03:30has said that he would have his eyes glued shut
03:32for 12 hours a day during filming.
03:34When I met Ray Charles,
03:36you want to talk about a boss.
03:38He said, let me tell you something, man.
03:40If you could play the blues, baby, you could do anything.
03:43All right, let's play some blues.
03:44I'm going to make it do what it do, baby, yeah.
03:47Throughout his career, Foxx has stunned fans
03:49with his impersonations of various personalities,
03:52like Dave Chappelle,
03:54I'm inside myself, I was in a fan.
03:56Denzel Washington,
03:57Hey, you get your hands off me.
04:00Al Pacino,
04:02Have a seat, I like cranberry juice.
04:05Ronald Reagan,
04:06Well, as a matter of fact, there you go again.
04:08and many more.
04:09The highest musical accolades weren't too far behind.
04:12Foxx snagged a 2010 Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Doer Group
04:17for Blame It featuring T-Pain from his third studio album, Intuition.
04:21Blame it on the blues, got you feeling loose.
04:23Blame it on the drone, got you reading a song.
04:26The early 2010s brought Foxx bigger box office hits
04:29and rave reviews in films like The Soloist,
04:31The Amazing Spider-Man 2,
04:33and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained,
04:35in which he played the title character,
04:37a bounty hunter who was formerly enslaved.
04:40So you really free?
04:41Yes, I was free.
04:48What I tell black folks that watch it
04:50if they feel a certain way, you're supposed to.
04:52If you hear the N-word or see dogs ripping apart a sleigh,
04:57you're supposed to feel everything you're supposed to feel.
05:00In 2016, Foxx became a real-life superhero
05:04when he rescued a man from a burning vehicle
05:06that had crashed in front of his home.
05:08I say you got angels around you.
05:10You have angels around you.
05:11In the years that followed,
05:12Foxx has remained a mainstay in entertainment
05:14as a game show host on Beat Shazam,
05:17the voice of the main character in Disney's Soul,
05:19and as co-creator and star of Netflix's
05:21Dad, Stop Embarrassing Me.
05:23In 2020, Foxx announced that his younger sister,
05:26D'Andra Dixon, who lived with Down syndrome, had passed.
05:29I'm the king of desperation.
05:32Oh, you sure are.
05:33I'm her big brother.
05:34It doesn't change just because she has special needs.
05:38Foxx has long served as an ambassador
05:40for the Global Down Syndrome Foundation.
05:42He is father to two daughters,
05:43Corinne, with whom he's collaborated on several projects,
05:46and another daughter, Annalise.
05:49What is my biggest fear?
05:50You know what? You're actually pretty...
05:52Yeah, pretty strong.
05:53You're not really scared of much.
05:55Pretty strong.
05:56You mean on me?
05:57Yeah, that's it, exactly. You too.
06:00In April 2023, his daughter, Corinne,
06:02announced that Foxx had been hospitalized
06:04with a medical emergency.
06:06After endless speculation and conflicting reports
06:08about his condition, she announced that her father
06:10has been out of the hospital for weeks, recuperating.
06:13Foxx entered a physical rehabilitation center in May 2023.
06:18I used to think it was corny when people would say
06:20that people are looking down on you.
06:25I didn't believe it.
06:29But I got a feeling.