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Hackford owned the film rights to Ray Charles' life story. The two men discussed the possibility of Foxx's playing the lead role, with Foxx displaying his usual confidence. "There was never any campaigning," says the director, laughing. "Jamie's too cool a customer. He just said, 'Yeah, you need me to do it.'" Foxx had the advantage of looking a lot like the young Charles, and after a meeting with the singer in which Foxx revealed the extent of his impressive piano skills--and Charles revealed the extent of his adultery--Foxx was given the role. "Jamie shares with Ray that huge ambition," says Hackford. "He has a voice that is going to come out somehow. But I have to admit, there was nothing he'd done that showed me he actually could do the part. I just had to leap."
The meeting between Foxx and Charles lasted for just one hour, but Hackford videotaped it, and Foxx began his preparation by watching the tape on an endless loop for six weeks. "What I saw was him not being Ray Charles," Foxx says. "I saw how he orders his food, how he talks to his assistant, how he talks to his woman." Foxx worked on Charles' stammer by listening to an audio cassette of an old talk show with Dinah Shore. "Dinah goes, 'Talk about the drugs, Ray.' And he stops for four or five seconds. Then he goes, 'Eh uh well uh ...' So every time in the movie someone confronts him with something--'Ray, I'm pregnant!'--it's 'Eh uh well uh.'"
Foxx is not a Method actor--he works visually, making lots of faces in the mirrors around his house--but he dropped 40 lbs., learned Charles' keyboard-fingering technique and insisted on wearing prosthetic eyelids that blinded him for most of the shoot. "At a certain point you realize that this is your shot," says Foxx. "So if you're going to do it, do it right. I wasn't trying to show off my actorliness or anything, but it helped the performance because you realize he never saw his kids, his family, his fans. He had to take somebody's word for everything. It made it much easier to understand why he had his guard up, what caused him pain."
Foxx's performance is flawless, and off the buzz for Ray, he is already rolling in new, high-quality scripts, the first of which, Collateral, has already opened. "Will Smith is at the front of the conveyor belt," he says, "but I'm carving my own little slot. My professional life ain't bad." Neither is his other life. Foxx splits time between his L.A. and Las Vegas homes, trailed by a large group of friends. "We play music together, write songs, read scripts, hang with girls, play basketball." (Sometimes he combines activities; a recent headline blared, FOXX SAYS SORRY FOR NAKED BASKETBALL ANTICS.) The actor socializes with many of the people he has impersonated, and is particularly tight with Cruise and Murphy, his idol, whom he describes as "still the funniest man in the world." (After he counseled Murphy to get dangerous, the comic, Foxx claims, responded, "Next movie I ain't gonna be in no forest with no bears and no kids.")