*Jamie Foxx said Oprah Winfrey had to step in and curb his partying ways during the run up to his eventual Academy Award for the Ray Charles biopic, “Ray.”
“I’m having such a good time and I’m not knowing I’m f–king up,” Foxx said on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show Tuesday. “I’m drinking … I’m doing every f–king thing you could possibly imagine.”
This is when Winfrey stepped in with a telephone call.
“‘You’re blowing it, Jamie Foxx,’” the 49-year-old remembered Winfrey telling him. “‘All of this gallivanting and all this kind of s–t, that’s not what you want to do … I want to take you somewhere. Make you understand the significance of what you’re doing.’”
In an effort to get Foxx on a better path, Winfrey organized a meeting for him with several legendary black actors at Quincy Jones’ home.
“We go in the house and there are all these old actors,” Foxx said. “Black actors from the ’60s and the ’70s. Who look like they just want to say, ‘Good look.’ They want to say, ‘Don’t blow it.’”
Foxx said it took Sidney Poitier, the first African-American to win an Oscar for Best Actor, to jolt him awake. Poitier apparently told Foxx at that crucial meeting, “‘I want to give you responsibility … When I saw your performance, it made me grow two inches.’”
At that moment, Foxx says, he broke down.
“To this day, it’s the most significant time in my life where it was, like, a chance to grow up,” Foxx said.
Foxx went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor — the third ever in history.
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