Eric Marlon Bishop born December 13, , [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] known professionally as Jamie Foxx , is an American actor, comedian, and singer. Following this success, he was given his own sitcom , The Jamie Foxx Show , in which he starred, co-created and produced from to That same year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the crime film Collateral.
He earned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot , with his features on the singles " Slow Jamz " by Twista alongside Kanye West , and " Gold Digger " by the former. Four of his five studio albums have charted in the top ten of the U. Since , Foxx has served as the host and executive producer of the Fox game show Beat Shazam.
Foxx began playing the piano when he was five years old. He attended Terrell High School , where he received top grades and played basketball and football as quarterback. 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, yards. Foxx first told jokes at a comedy club's open mic night in , after accepting a girlfriend's dare. When he found that female comedians were often called first to perform, he chose the stage name of Jamie Foxx, which he felt was ambiguous enough to disallow any biases, [ 11 ] [ 17 ] with his surname being a tribute to the black comedian Redd Foxx.
Following a recurring role in the comedy-drama sitcom Roc , [ 18 ] Foxx went on to star in his own sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show , from to , which he also co-created and produced through his company Foxx Hole Productions and was aired on the WB network. Foxx made his film debut in the comedy Toys.
His first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone 's film Any Given Sunday , where he was cast as a hard-partying quarterback, [ 9 ] partly because of his own football background. Three years later, Foxx played taxi driver Max Durocher in the Mann film Collateral alongside Tom Cruise , for which he received outstanding reviews.
