(2 of 4)
By the time Foxx won a piano scholarship to United States International University in San Diego, he had figured out how to convert his confidence and pain into fearlessness and ambition. At a Los Angeles comedy club in 1989, his then girlfriend urged him to grab the open mic and perform (though it's hard to imagine he needed much persuading). "I went on as Cosby, Cosby the gangster," Foxx recalls, slipping instantly into long, uncoiled Bill Cosby sentences punctuated with profanity. "I did Tyson. I did Reagan. When I got on that stage I felt like all the elements were finally in place. It was so easy."
Three years later, having changed his name from Eric Bishop to the gender-neutral Jamie Foxx (comedy-club owners at the time were booking women sight unseen), he landed on In Living Color, the sketch-comedy show that launched the careers of Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez and several dozen Wayanses. Foxx soon made a name for himself playing characters like Ugly Wanda on In Living Color, Crazy George on Roc and Bunz in Booty Call, a movie about a quest for condoms. (He also released an R&B album, Peep This, that he would like to forget.) But Foxx discovered that Ugly Wanda, Crazy George and Bunz are not names that scan well on the back of a head shot. Even though he had his own sitcom for five years on the WB, "when I started trying to do movies," he says, "people were like, 'We dig Jamie Foxx, but what's up with the choices?' They didn't understand; Booty Call was not a choice! It was what I did because I couldn't get work in anything better."
Foxx attributes the lack of good roles to a Hollywood slot system for black comics. "Will Smith has a slot," he says. "Martin Lawrence has a slot. Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, they all have slots. I needed to get a slot." (Foxx says this with no rancor; he believes white actors have it tougher because "there's so damn many of them.") He read for the Rod Tidwell role in Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise (for which Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar), but even after Oliver Stone gave him a breakout part as a rookie quarterback in Any Given Sunday--reportedly because first choice Sean (P. Diddy) Combs threw like a girl--nothing changed. "After Any Given Sunday--I'm not kidding--I got a script called The Next Hot Negro. The. Next. Hot. Negro."
Rather than smother a budding reputation, Foxx turned down every film role for a year. "I had something to fall back on," he says, referring to the lucrative stand-up tour he did in 2001. "But I believe that with acting, people will find you if you have talent. And I have talent." Sure enough, Michael Mann eventually saw Any Given Sunday and hired Foxx to play the worshipful corner man, Drew (Bundini) Brown, in Ali. He drew plaudits--and more bad scripts. Then Taylor Hackford called.