Arts|Jamie Foxx Goes Dark to Play a Musical Hero
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THE NEW SEASON/FILM
TARZANA, Calif. - DEEP in the belly of his sprawling ranch home in this modest suburban neighborhood, past the fleet of luxury automobiles lining the front driveway, past the living room decorated with African art, past the gym and the billiard room, is where you'll find Jamie Foxx this afternoon, munching on a bag of barbecue chips in his high-tech recording studio.
Artificial stars twinkle in the ceiling, giving the false impression that night has arrived. And Mr. Foxx, perched before a giant mixing board, looks all too eager to retire for the evening -- until the talk turns to music. Ray Charles's music, to be more specific. Then, as if he's just mainlined a can of Red Bull, Mr. Foxx perks up, his eyes brighten, his speech quickens: " 'Georgia!' " he says, shaking his head back and forth in awe. "That's my favorite Ray Charles song of all time. There are better songs that he did, but 'Georgia' -- that song nails it for me."
Mr. Foxx, 36, has been thinking a lot about Charles and his music lately. He plays him in "Ray," Taylor Hackford's ambitious biopic, which opens Oct. 29. The film follows Charles from his difficult childhood in the segregated South to his days as a heroin addict and then to his eventual triumph as an international star. "Ray" is not just the first test of Mr. Foxx's ability to carry a picture, but, if all goes well, his entree to a kind of triple stardom rarely contemplated and even more rarely seen.
After years spent toiling in disposable B movies and on his WB sitcom, Mr. Foxx, for the time being, is laying down what he calls the "comedy sword" and redefining himself and his role in the world of entertainment. He says he plans to model his acting career on that of Tom Hanks, who parlayed his humble "Bosom Buddies" beginnings into an Oscar-studded résumé. But he looks beyond even that, to hit records and music videos and who can say what else.
It's not as if Mr. Foxx doesn't have the tools. He's a gifted comedian, a trained musician and, as his most recent spate of movie work demonstrates, a budding star. That was him, after all, sharing top billing with Tom Cruise in "Collateral." No longer at the mercy of the movie industry, Mr. Foxx is determined to avoid another -- dare we mention it? -- "Booty Call." "I'm waiting on the right pitch now," he says, employing one of several sports metaphors he will use in the course of this conversation. "You want to be like Barry Bonds, he's got a gazillion walks under his belt because he doesn't hit just anything."
To that end, Mr. Foxx signed up for "Redemption," a made-for-television movie about Stan (Tookie) Williams, one of the founding members of the Crips. Mr. Foxx gained 40 pounds of muscle for the project, on which he was also a producer. He went from playing that tough-talking murderer to the nerdy cab driver forced to chauffeur an assassin around on a nightlong killing spree in "Collateral." The performance earned Mr. Foxx some of the best reviews of his career. Neither role, however, could have prepared him for the enormous responsibility he would shoulder with "Ray," or the remarkable transformation his body would undergo.
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