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Jamie Foxx: the thrills and tears of The Ray Charles Story

Ebony, Nov, 2004 by Aldore Collier

SECRETS don't last long in Hollywood. The tide started building months before the first screening of the movie, and there was as much surprise and awe as accolades.

Few, it seems, expected Jamie Foxx to so totally embrace the role of Ray Charles in the film biography Ray. Few expected Foxx, a classically-trained pianist, to effortlessly nail down the nuances, the voice and the thrills and tears of the great singer's life.

Foxx's heralded performance in Ray comes several months after he received big press as a taxi driver chauffeuring around a vicious, yet contemplative, hit man in the major success Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jada Pinker Smith.

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The result is that some are calling 2004 the best year of Foxx's professional career. And he's being touted as one of the front-runners for Academy Award consideration.

Foxx has heard the flattering buzz before; he appreciates it, but refuses to buy into it. "I've seen it happen to other people," he says. "I'm 36 now. So I got a better take on what's going on. I'm able to deal with the success in a different way now."

Sure, he's gotten tremendous press, but Foxx is grounded and aware that in Hollywood such stellar notices are ultimately minor blips on a major radar screen. "To me, it's about just pushing forward," he explains. "Everything right now, we have in the bank. I have to go back out there and keep making great decisions."

Still, he's in a position that he never expected to be. "I think this year is what we call 'beyond my wildest dream' because I never dreamed anything quite like this."

Acclaim was the last thing on his mind when he first sat down with Ray Charles to discuss the project. Staying grounded was.

His word for the encounter is "incredible! Ray comes in and says, 'If you can play the blues, man, you can do this.' So, we started playing the blues on the piano. And you know how he is. He's moving and doing his thing. I'm trying to catch up. Then he says, 'Try this Thelonious Monk.' I'm like 'Thelonious Monk?' I hit it wrong and he said "Come on, man. It's right underneath your fingers.' And I finally got it, and he said, 'That's it. The kid's got it!"

Foxx refused to spend much time hanging in the Los Angeles studio with Charles. Because most of his role would be as the younger Charles, he didn't want to risk complicating matters. So he spoke to the singer's children and friends like his lifelong buddy Quincy Jones.

And he reviewed tapes of Charles' appearances on talk shows years ago. "I used that as the DNA to get the young Ray as we moved through the film. It was just taking him, studying him and then crushing it down to where it's not the impersonation, but the nuances, how he talked to his kids, how he talked to his wife."

The physically difficult part came when Foxx had to lose 30 pounds and wear a prosthetic device over his eyes that actually rendered him blind for 12 to 14 hours a day on the set.

"I was blind even during lunch," he says. "It was grueling, but I couldn't cheat. We'd get on the set around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and put the eyes on, start shooting around 8:00 a.m. and maybe finish up around 10:00 p.m. If I cheated, it wouldn't be genuine."

The reward came when Charles' children saw Foxx in character and said, "Man, that's my daddy" he says. "And that's when we knew we had something special."

Jamie recalls times when some of the children were on the set and had to leave because the scenes were to reminiscent of their actual life experiences." They'd say, 'I can't watch this because it's too real.' It was painful, but it was something that was necessary."

The movie does not sugarcoat Charles' turbulent life. It shows his lifelong guilt over witnessing the death of his younger brother. It also shows in great detail Charles' years of womanizing and painful drug addiction.

The film features a quartet of striking women--Regina King, Aunjanue Ellis and Sharon Warren, who light up the screen with powerful performances. Warren gave such an electrifying performance as Charles' mother that she is being touted for an Academy Award for her work in her first movie.

The film is also a showcase for Charles' soaring genius and independence. He was blind since the age of 7, but had more vision than sighted music executives.

Foxx was phenomenally impressed with the way Charles made his own way. "He knew what he was doing," he says.

Charles took control of his music at a time when few artists contemplated such a revolutionary move. He wasn't just happy to be recording--he wanted to control his music, and his destiny. The irony is that the blind Charles ended up with more wealth than most of his sighted contemporaries.

Good reviews are nothing new to Foxx. His riveting performance as Bundini Brown in Ali with Will Smith brought great reviews. So did his role in Any Given Sunday with Al Pacino.

The notices helped him get more Hollywood attention, but Foxx, who was born Eric Bishop in Terrell, Texas, took it in stride. He stays grounded by having earthbound friends and, believe it or not, enemies around him.

Jamie Foxx: the thrills and tears of The Ray Charles Story

Ebony, Nov, 2004 by Aldore Collier

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