As we all know, Jamie Foxx is living anything but the average life. One minute, he’s hanging out by the pools of hotspot hotels like Miami’s Raleigh and Delano, basking in his own starlight. And the next, he’s working his day job, shooting guns and racing speedboats as he prepares for Miami Vice with director Michael Mann and costar Colin Farrell, the young Irishman being touted as the new Tom Cruise. And of course, he works nights, too, recording an album for J Records with Timbaland, the Neptunes, and Kanye West, among others. The girlies just fit in with the overtime.
And Foxx is anything but an average guy. When he moves now, the world watches, rumors swirl, and people pay attention to more than what he does on-screen. Like the nude photos that surfaced before Oscar time, involving Foxx and a nubile woman. Allegedly, a construction worker found them in the trash near Foxx’s Las Vegas home and attempted to sell them without success. (He later claimed that men associated with the actor threatened him, an accusation that Foxx emphatically denies.)
Foxx finds the whole thing funny. His philosophy is old school, like that of Richard Pryor: What doesn’t kill you ends up in your stand-up act. “It didn’t matter to me, ’cause I wasn’t with no man or no animal, and I never done anything in my life that I’m ashamed of,” Foxx says. But he thought the risqué flicks might have cost him his Oscar shot, if not for the misfortunes of another superstar.
“The day [the photos] were announced, Michael Jackson was going to court,” Foxx remembers. “There are so many people that have raised the bar of outlandishness, I ain’t even scraping the surface. Bill Clinton made it good for everybody. You expect bad things.”
A rumor he doesn’t mind—though he insists it isn’t true—is the one that he and Oprah are seeing each other. “Me and Oprah? I wouldn’t be mad at that. She’s so attractive, not only is she attractive to look at, she got different gears,” Foxx says. “I believe God is Oprah. We get to heaven, get behind the pearly gates, and there she is, and we’ll be, like, ‘Ah, man, you fooled us.’”
But for now, since his grandmother passed away last year at 95, there’s only one woman in his life: his 11-year-old daughter, Corinne. She and her mother live close to Foxx in Tarzana, Calif., and when she visits, he shuts down everything else.
“Fatherhood is an inborn computer that clicks on,” he says. “Me? I’m the ultimate ice cream for my daughter, never missing any event. So when you say it’s tough when you have a business that can keep you busy, and you just send the money, you have so many things missing. You never know the feeling of coming to your kid’s rescue, when your daughter is like, ‘I really need you, Daddy.’ And it may be for some bullshit. The dog is dying. But I say, Daddy is gonna make sure that dog doesn’t die. And in return you hear, ‘Thank you, Daddy.’”
Foxx is quiet for a moment, smiling at the memory. “I don’t want to be in the twilight of my career and have my daughter say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really around.’ To me, that would be the worst thing in the world.”
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Cold As Ice: Young Jeezy by David Peisner
The Chosen One: Barack Obama by Jamie Katz
Rude Awakening: Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston by Rob Kenner
Copyrights
Cheo H. Coker. A Point of No Return. Copyright 2005 Vibe.com.
