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

"I have people around me, both good and bad, and that keeps me balanced," he says. "There are guys out there who I know don't like me necessarily, but they hang out with me, and I always get the honest opinion from them. It's an old cliche, but it's best to keep your enemies close."

He says he became a new Jamie Foxx during his comedy days when he found out that females got more time with the microphone.

Pianos, not microphones, were his first love.

A pianist since grade school, Foxx had his eyes on imitating his musical idol, who was Lionel Richie, not Ray Charles.

"I was going to be Lionel Richie. I went to college at U.S. International University in San Diego on a piano scholarship."

He loved the piano, but he also loved clowning around and making friends laugh. Even during an interview, he can't help lapsing into the celebrity impersonations with which he earned wild applause, including impersonations of Bill Cosby, Mike Tyson, the late President Ronald Reagan and Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan.

It was in the late 1980s when he decided to take comedy seriously.

"I would go to the dance club and take the microphone out of the booth and stand right there in the middle of the dance floor and tell jokes," he says. "I'd hold my mic like Eddie Murphy and do Richard Pryor gestures."

The rest, he says, was Cinderella-like. TV officials were in the audience one night and were immediately impressed with him.

Foxx went on to work with the late comic Robin Harris and soon was a cast member of the Fox TV hit In Living Color, calling himself the "eighth funniest person on the show," behind the Wayans family members, David Alan Grier and Jim Carrey. He also was featured on TV's Roc with Charles Dutton.

He parlayed the TV success into movie roles that included Bait, Booty Call and The Players Club, and TV shows like The Jamie Foxx Show.

"The TV show was bittersweet," he explains." It was really mediocre. I would do shows and I'd be like, 'Oh man, that's not funny.' It was hurtful because I wanted the show to be special."

Because he's in such a good place professionally now, Foxx knows he's a sexy commodity in a town that lavishes nonstop attention on the star of the moment.

He shakes his head quickly and says: "Hey, I had all that with In Living Color. And when that show was over, my friends all disappeared. I'll never forget moving to Las Vegas and I didn't have any phone calls. I've seen how it is when you're sizzling."

And he's seen it when there's deafening silence.

So, he's cautious and guarded about the nonstop raves and the Oscar talk he's now receiving.

"I compare it all to a football team. You still have to put on a helmet and shoes the same way as before." He says it's a bigger game, but the athlete has to do the same things as before.

It's much more important to him to keep working and looking forward. "If you worry about awards and who's going to win or all that kind of stuff, you're going to lose, you're going to start chasing. The main thing is to be appreciative. I want all the attention, but I want the attention on the projects I'm doing."