JAMIE FOXX

Biography

Jamie Foxx was born Eric Morlon Bishop on December 13, 1967, in Terrell, Texas. His mother had been adopted, so when her marriage with Foxx's father ended, Foxx's adoptive grandparents, Mark and Esther Talley, adopted him too (he was only 7 months old at the time). In spite of a rigid upbringing from the Talleys, Foxx describes his childhood as happy, and he was active in the Boy Scouts and his church choir. He started taking piano lessons at age 3. In school, he was known as a jokester.

In high school, Foxx was quarterback for his school football team and was good enough to get press in local Dallas newspapers. Looking back, Foxx felt that his sophomore year, when he played on the varsity team, was one of the best of his life. Yet athletics took a backseat to Foxx's passion for music; after high school, he got into United States International University in San Diego on a music scholarship, and he also attended Julliard, learning classical piano.

jamie foxx on in living color

Foxx left college in the late 1980s, ending up in Los Angeles and getting a job selling shoes. One night, on a girlfriend's dare, Foxx stepped up to the mike at The Comedy Store and was an instant hit. He quit his day job and started doing stand-up comedy seven nights a week. It was then that the former Eric Bishop picked the androgynous stage name Jamie Foxx, because he had noticed that club emcees would call up women to perform more often than men. Foxx soon made his mark on the club scene and, in 1991, became a cast member on the hit comedy show In Living Color, alongside other rising comedy stars like Jim Carrey and the Wayans brothers. Foxx also landed a recurring role on the sitcom Roc.

After leaving In Living Color in 1994, Foxx released an R&B album, Peep This, which was acclaimed but did not prove to be a breakout hit. Foxx continued his career as a comic actor. During the mid-1990s, he appeared in movies like Toys (1992), The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), The Great White Hype (1996), Booty Call (1997), and The Players Club (1998). On TV, Foxx starred in his own comedy series, The Jamie Foxx Show, for which he won an NAACP Image Award. In 1999, he took a step toward drama, playing football star Willie Beamen in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday.

jamie foxx plays ray

Only in the last few years has Foxx's star really begun to rise. He appeared in the thriller Bait in 2000 and in Michael Mann's acclaimed biopic Ali in 2001. However, his profile was set back by an arrest after a fight with police at Harrah's Casino in New Orleans in April 2003. He eventually pled guilty to a count of disturbing the peace as part of a plea bargain.

In 2004, Foxx scored a dramatic hat trick; he starred in the TV movie Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story, reunited with director Mann for Collateral and turned in an acclaimed performance as Ray Charles in Ray. These roles made him the first actor to be nominated for three Golden Globe awards in a single year; he won Best Actor for Ray. He also won the Oscar as Best Actor for Ray and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Collateral.

Foxx's projects in 2005 include Stealth and Jarhead, and a big screen remake of Miami Vice due out July 2006. He is even busy until 2007, with a role in the film Damage Control.

He is also working on an album for J Records. Although a confirmed bachelor, Foxx has a daughter, Corrine, born in 1995, who lives with her mother