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50 things you didn't know about actor, singer and comedian Jamie Foxx.
1. Eric Marlon Bishop known professionally as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer, comedian, writer, and producer.
2. As an actor, his work in the 2004 Ray Charles biographical film Ray earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical or comedy.
3. Other prominent roles include the title role in the film Django Unchained (2012), the supervillain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and William Stacks in the 2014 version of Annie.
4. Jamie Foxx also starred in his own television show from 1996 to 2001, the sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, in which he played Jamie King.
5. Jamie Foxx is also a Grammy Award-winning musician, producing three albums which have charted highly on the US Billboard 200: Unpredictable (2005), which topped the chart, Intuition (2008), and Best Night of My Life (2010).
6. Jamie Foxx was born in Terrell, Texas.
7. He is the son of Darrell Bishop (renamed Shahid Abdula following his conversion to Islam), who sometimes worked as a stockbroker, and Louise Annette Talley Dixon.
8. Shortly after his birth, Foxx was adopted and raised by his mother's adoptive parents, Esther Marie (Nelson), a domestic worker and nursery operator, and Mark Talley, a yard worker.
9. Jamie Foxx has had little contact with his birth parents, who were not part of his upbringing.
10. Jamie Foxx was raised in the black quarter of Terrell, which at the time was a racially segregated community.
11. Jamie Foxx has often acknowledged his grandmother's influence in his life as one of the greatest reasons for his success.
12. Jamie Foxx began playing the piano when he was five years old.
13. Jamie Foxx had a strict Baptist upbringing, and as a teenager he was a part-time pianist and choir leader in Terrell's New Hope Baptist Church.
14. Jamie Foxx natural talent for telling jokes was already in evidence as a second grader, when his teacher would use him as a reward: if the class behaved, Foxx would tell them jokes.
15. Jamie Foxx attended Terrell High School, where he received top grades and played basketball and football (as quarterback).
16. His ambition was to play for the Dallas Cowboys, and he was the first player in the school's history to pass for more than 1,000 yards.
17. Jamie Foxx also sang in a band called Leather and Lace.
18. After completing high school, Foxx received a scholarship to United States International University, where he studied classical music and composition.
19. Jamie Foxx first told jokes at a comedy club's open mic night in 1989, after accepting a girlfriend's dare.
20. When he found that female comedians were often called first to perform, he changed his name to Jamie Foxx, feeling that it was a name ambiguous enough to disallow any biases.
21. Jamie Foxx chose his surname as a tribute to the African-American comedian Redd Foxx.
22. Jamie Foxx joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991, where his recurrent character Wanda also shared a name with Redd's friend and co-worker, LaWanda Page.
23. Following a recurring role in the comedy-drama sitcom Roc, Foxx went on to star in his own sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, from 1996 to 2001.
24. Jamie Foxx made his film debut in the 1992 comedy Toys.
25. Jamie Foxx His first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone's 1999 film Any Given Sunday, where he was cast as a hard-partying American football player, partly because of his own football background.
26. Jamie Foxx played taxi driver Max Durocher in the film Collateral alongside Tom Cruise, for which he received outstanding reviews and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
27. In 1994, Foxx released an album (on the Fox record label) entitled Peep This. In 2003, Foxx made a cameo in Benzino's music video for "Would You", which features LisaRaye McCoy and Mario Winans.
28. In 2004, Foxx featured on the rapper Twista's song, "Slow Jamz", together with Kanye West, which reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and #3 on the UK Singles chart.
29. His second collaboration with Kanye West, "Gold Digger," in which Foxx sang the Ray Charles-influenced "I Got a Woman" hook, then went straight to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining there for 10 weeks.
30. In 2005, Foxx featured on the single "Georgia" by Atlanta rappers Ludacris and Field Mob, which sampled Ray Charles' hit "Georgia on My Mind".
31. Jamie Foxx would also portray Ray Charles in the biographical film Ray (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor Fand the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
32. Jamie Foxx is the second male in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, Collateral and Ray (the only other male actor to achieve this feat being Al Pacino).
33. In 2005, Foxx was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
34. Jamie Foxx released his second studio album, Unpredictable, in December 2005. It debuted at #2, selling 598,000 copies in its first week, rising to #1 the following week and selling an additional 200,000 copies. To date, the album has sold 1.98 million copies in the United States, and was certified double Platinum by the RIAA. The album also charted on the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at #9.
35. Jamie Foxx became the fourth artist to have both won an Academy Award® for an acting role and to have achieved a #1 album in the U.S, joining Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Barbra Streisand.
36. At the 2006 Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards, Foxx won Best Duet/Collaboration with Kanye West for "Gold Digger" and tied with Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You" for Video of the Year.
37. On December 8, 2006, Foxx received four Grammy Award® nominations, which included Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for Love Changes featuring Mary J. Blige, Best R&B Album for Unpredictable, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for Georgia by Ludacris & Field Mob featuring Jamie Foxx, and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for Unpredictable featuring Ludacris.
38. Following on from these successes, Foxx went on to appear in the box-office hits Jarhead, Miami Vice and Dreamgirls, which lifted his profile even higher as a bankable star in Hollywood.
39. 2007 brought him the lead role in the action thriller film The Kingdom opposite Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner and Ashraf Barhom.
40. In September 2007, Foxx was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: "[it was] one of the most amazing days of my life," said Foxx.
41. In April 2009, Foxx played the lead role in the dramatic film The Soloist. A few months later in October 2009, he played a starring role alongside Gerard Butler in the thriller Law Abiding Citizen.
42. Jamie Foxx released his third album titled Intuition in 2008, featuring Kanye West, T.I., Ne-Yo and T-Pain. The album's first single, "Just Like Me" featuring T.I., was promoted by a video directed by Brett Ratner which featured an appearance by Taraji P. Henson.
43. The second single "Blame It" featured T-Pain and became a top 5 single on the Billboard Hot 100 and a number-one single on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The "Blame It" music video, directed by Hype Williams, features cameo appearances by Forest Whitaker, Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Howard, Quincy Jones and Jake Gyllenhaal, amongst others.
44. Foxx's musical career has also included a number of collaborations. In 2007, he recorded the song "She Goes All the Way" with country superstars Rascal Flatts for their Still Feels Good album.
45. Jamie Foxx performed backing vocals for artist/songwriter Tank. He featured alongside The-Dream on Plies' "Please Excuse My Hands."
46. He also appeared alongside Fabolous on the remix of Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent".
47. Jamie Foxx collaborated with rapper The Game on the track "Around the World". Foxx also featured on T.I.'s single "Live in the Sky" from the album King.
48. In 2013, Foxx was cast as President James Sawyer in White House Down alongside Channing Tatum. The following year, Foxx appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as the villain Electro, and co-starred with Quvenzhané Wallis in Annie, Sony's Will Smith and Jay-Z produced update of the comic strip-turned-musical.
49. In April 2011, Foxx voiced Nico, a canary in the movie Rio.
50. During the summer of 2011, Foxx was involved as a producer in In the Flow with Affion Crockett on Fox.
Source: Wikipedia.org
