Interview: Jamie Foxx
Getting Serious With Jamie Foxx
The first time Jamie Foxx made a musical bio-pic he earned an Oscar. Now he’s playing a musician again in The Soloist, the real-life story of a homeless virtuoso, which comes out next spring
By Bob Strauss
Last time we checked, Jamie Foxx was a triple threat: funny comedian, chart-topping recording artist and Oscar-winning dramatic actor.
He’s applying at least two of those talents — the same combo that earned him the Academy Award for Ray — to next spring’s dramatic tearjerker The Soloist.
Like the Ray Charles bio-pic, this is a true-life musical story. And the person Foxx plays, Nathaniel Ayers, is saddled with a mighty handicap. But similarities end there.
“It’s like A Beautiful Mind meets The Pianist, in a sense,” Foxx, biceps pumped large and head shaved almost clean, says of The Soloist during an interview in Los Angeles.
Doesn’t sound like as much fun as Ray. But it could be even more moving.
“It’s about a guy who was found underneath an L.A. freeway by Steve Lopez, who is a writer for the Los Angeles Times,” explains Foxx. “Lopez had a wreck on his bike and heard this beautiful violin being played on two strings. He befriended the guy, found out he went to Juilliard, and this story went in the paper and people started sending cellos and violins. It’s just one of those stories that, when you read it, it really works on you.”
That’s because the talented musician was not only homeless, but schizophrenic.
Co-starring the hottest actor of the year, Robert Downey Jr., as Lopez and directed by Britain’s Joe Wright (Atonement), The Soloist has all the earmarks of an emotional class act.
And Foxx may never have worked more painstakingly on a role. To start, he had to learn to play, well, violin and cello. Perhaps not as hard as it sounds for someone who started piano lessons at the age of five, and who went to college on a music scholarship. Still, doesn’t it take years of practice to make either of those string things even listenable?
“I hadn’t played the violin and cello before,” Foxx says. “I mean, we’ve all touched everybody’s instruments while we were playing…okay, that didn’t come out right! But we’ve all messed around with the drums or the violin or the cello, so it’s all in you because you work right next to that person. It’s just a matter of finding your way to express yourself with that cello.”
Jamie Foxx in The Soloist |
Easy for him to say. As for the acting part of the gig, Foxx avoided
the one thing that you’d think he’d take full advantage of: getting to
know Ayers personally.
“I got a chance to watch him,” Foxx recalls like it was the most
extraordinary privilege. “I didn’t want to meet him, because sometimes
when you meet people, then they change. I just wanted to watch, get
those jewels of nuances. At first I was told he was very skinny, but
he’s not. He pushed a cart around that, I guess, is about 200 pounds.
You have to be strong down where he lives, because the people down
there… it’s very dangerous.
“But he’s a very interesting person. Very posh, if that makes sense,
because he does come from this classical background. So even within
this crazy jungle where he’s living, he still has sort of this air to
him. He’s a beautiful person and it was a great opportunity to get
under his skin.”
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Foxx’s approach paid off, according to an authoritative, if totally biased, source.
“Jamie really nailed it,” co-star Downey says during a recent chat. “I got to see that thing that one or two people said when we were shooting Chaplin, about someone just so diving into something that it’s, like, this transforming event.”
This about a guy we first came to know making a jackass of himself on TV’s In Living Color and in movies such as Booty Call.
But Foxx has always been a multitalented overachiever. Raised by his grandparents in the Dallas suburb of Terrell, Texas, young Eric Marlon Bishop (he changed his name thinking it would get him easier access to the mic at comedy clubs) not only excelled at music but was the quarterback of his high school football team.
That experience came into play years later when he landed his first serious film role in Oliver Stone’s gridiron drama Any Given Sunday. Acclaimed work in Ali, Collateral, Jarhead, Dreamgirls and The Kingdom followed.
And although Foxx has yet to prove himself a huge box-office draw, he has gained the distinction of being the only African-American to earn two Oscar nominations in the same year (for Ray and Collateral). Add owning an Academy Award to also having a number one album, Unpredictable, and Foxx is in the rare company of only Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand.
All that, plus he’s hung with Barack Obama and is known for throwing lavish and star-studded parties at his home overlooking the San Fernando Valley. But Foxx really does try to stay humble about it all. He even describes himself as working class.
“Things are happening so fast now, you don’t have time to sit back and just go, ‘Oh, let me bask,’” he cracks. “You accept the moment and really enjoy it, then you go back to work. That’s what I mean by working class. If you’re not paying attention to it and you get caught up in yourself, you could easily find yourself going backwards, doing things that just aren’t good for you.
“Being the comedian at heart and being a musician…. Sometimes, when I’m doing a show at a club, maybe some of the people in the audience don’t even recognize the accomplishment,” he says. “They’re just into what’s going on now; ‘You’re here in the club, what’s the joke, what’s the song, can I get that out of you right now?’”
It’s not just about pumping out the gags, the tunes or the movies, though. Perhaps applying some of his quarterback training, Foxx is always looking at the quality of the play, the overall game and the record book.
“I think the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, you try to do your best at it before it goes out,” Foxx says.
"’Cause once it’s on the YouTube, it’ll be bad forever or great forever! So that’s another hurdle to get over, making sure that everything’s right.”
Bob Strauss is an L.A.-based writer.
Did ya know?
Michael Bishop, former quarterback for the Toronto Argonauts, and now the starting QB for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, is Jamie Foxx’s first cousin. It’s true. Foxx (whose real name is Eric Marlon Bishop) was also a football star — but only at his high school in Terrell, Texas. After that he gave up the gridiron to attend San Diego’s United States International University on a music scholarship.