JARHEAD
An Interview With Jamie Foxx

He’s now officially an Oscar-winning actor, but Jamie Foxx is still the down home guy he was when I first met him two years ago for Breakin’ all the Rules. Now, of course, he’s able to branch out and play characters where he can show his real acting talents.

And that’s starting with Jarhead, the first film after receiving the Academy Award for portraying Ray Charles (of course Stealth came out this Summer, but we won’t count that against him). Jamie stars as Staff Sgt. Sykes of the United States Marines during the first Gulf War. It’s actually a supporting role for him, but one he embraced:

Jamie Foxx: “You know what, I think that in this situation you look to Mendes, to get a relationship with Sam Mendes, I think is worth all of it, an Oscar-winning director. We had such a great time doing this film and so in the future it'll be like ‘Man, we had a good time; let’s do some other things.’ At the time I didn't really know what Ray was going to do, no one knew what it was going to do. At one point, and for a while Ray didn't have a home, it was like ‘We've got to get cracking, we've got to get moving.’ We had to get our hustle and this is a great hustle, it's meat on the bone, it's not contrived, it doesn't look like I went and get all the money after the Oscars and do something like Booty Call or something like that. I mean, you stay in that vein because I don't want it to look like Ok, I'm Johnny Carson now.’ I've always enjoyed being Ed McMahon, Ed McMahon has always had the coolest spot. And what I mean by that is like Will Smith is Johnny Carson, Tom Cruise is Johnny Carson, I'm over here laughing and it's been great. Winning the Oscars is kind of like Ed McMahon when he got Star Search. ‘Oh, you got your own thing,’ so it's all good.”

Jamie took a break during production of the film to attend all the award shows and pick up the ‘Golden Boy.’ So it must have been pretty nice to arrive back on set after winning:

Jamie Foxx: “It was great, man, it was great getting back to the set because those young guys were like ‘Yo, man, how was it?’ I said ‘Oh, I really felt great.’ ‘No, no, who was there?’ I was like ‘Oh, man, it was Clint Eastwood, Meg Ryan, it was crazy!’ So it was fun with those guys and I think that it's fun for me having something like that. Because when you look at other Oscar winners like Halle and Denzel, it's kind of like ‘Wow, they won.’ But with me, I was down in Miami right afterwards at Wet Willy's cracking jokes and things like that and I'm able to talk about things to those guys that some of the other Oscar winners couldn't talk about it. So I was giving the stories out especially about the after parties, it's crazy.”

But what’s it really like to be Jamie Foxx? What has changed for him since he’s won:

Jamie Foxx: “As far as perception changing, I don't know necessarily if it has changed. There has been a little bit of that, so what you have to do everyday is kill that Oscar beast and go out and try to take two or three steps back and not be the ugly person that I guess it could turn you into. The way that I've done that is to just keep telling jokes about it. Just as your feeling that you're doing you're thing, you done won the Oscar and you feeling like you're at the top of your game, you're at the top of the mountain and you come off of the elevator and there's a brother going ‘Hey, Jamie, man, congratulations on that Grammy, dog. I mean, you did your thing, dog. Hey, man, what song was that?’ So that lets you know like ‘Wait a minute, everyone ain't feeling it. Everyone didn't get a chance to catch it like me.’ So you take it and you bring it back down and you use the Oscar for those things that you really want.”

Ok, for the real story about what the Oscar has done for him:

Jamie Foxx: “I bought a Lamborghini. It's crazy, I think that the thing is that it's a different type of woman when you win an Oscar. It's like all the young in the club I'm not messing with you right now. I've got this over here with the thirty five and over with they're own companies and seasoned and learned and they break down everything. ‘You know that night I was so touched.’ I'm like ‘Well, I'm going to touch you again.’ That's the thing that maybe I can say that maybe Halle and Denzel can't say because I get to joke. I told Will ‘I was making love to this girl right after I won the Oscars, and she said ‘Oh, Jamie.’ I said ‘No, no, no, that's not my name.’ ‘Oh, Academy Award Winner Jamie.’ So, man, I'll tell you what, if you ain't got one, get you one.”

Jarhead is 98% men, much different than some of Jamie’s other films. What’s it like to be on the set with all the guys like Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard:

Jamie Foxx: It was good and there was camaraderie and it was like if you allow yourself to be in those characters and allow yourself to get into these things where these guys, even though they were shooting blanks, they still wanted to make it look like they were the best at what they do so you had a healthy amount of competition. A healthy amount of that, that's what it's all about. I think that when you look at the Marines that were there, ex-Marines and ones that are in corp, they have this sort of like a social club in a sense where they were talking about things that pertained to war - ‘What if this happened, what if that happens?’ You find your way of hanging and keeping things interesting, there's always interesting people that you meet that are from different parts of the world that you kind of bag on or dump or stuff like that, so it was a lot of fun.”

Of course Jamie and Colin Farrell are shooting the movie version of the tv show Miami Vice right now. He talked about how that’s going and a couple of his other future projects:

Jamie Foxx: “Oh, that's going great. Colin Farrell is a great individual. He's a lady killer, you know what I mean. It's great to see him getting into that Crocket, and again I'm Ed McMahon over here laughing, so it's right up my alley. It's got guns and the city and a different look that Michael Mann is going to be putting in it. Dreamgirls is later on and then we'll do Kingdom and we have the album out there that Kanye West did. I call it smithereens now, it's not just a smash; that's killing right now. I think that's some kind of history, too. I don't know if too many Oscar winners have had number one songs, so we're doing that. I got my own clothing line coming out, I've got my own shoes, I got hats, I'm kidding (laughing). No, but December 6th, my album comes and that's one of those things. The guest list alone is great, we've got Snoop, we've got Timberlake, we got Ludicrous, we got Mary J. Blige. I fooled them a little bit too because I have some young stuff at the beginning, some young stuff at the end, but in the middle is our stuff. One of the interludes is talking about the success of this, about going through infidelity. So we're dealing with things like that.”

If you could have only been in the room, Jamie gave us a little impromptu demo of what one of his songs sounds like. Here are some of the lyrics:

Jamie Foxx (singing): “Some make love, how you doing, get to know, treat your woman like this, treat your man like that, some infidelity on both sides.”

Speaking of singing, American Idol winner Fantasia is up for a part in Jamie’s new film Dreamgirls. And if Jamie gets his way, she’ll be co-starring with him:

Jamie Foxx: “Yeah, how about that, I think that if Fantasia does it, it's out of here. If she does the movie, it's in the stratosphere, it's nuts. At first, I wasn't going to do it; they didn't know what was going on and I wanted to do it. Then I found out that Eddie Murphy was doing it and Beyonce was doing it and I was like ‘Come on, now. I've got to get that; I need to be in that because that's going to be outstanding.’”

With all the success of his music career, would he ever quit acting:

Jamie Foxx: “No, man. I'm not giving up anything. I want them to get tired of me.”

Believe me, no one will get tired of Jamie Foxx. Jarhead opens in theaters November 4th; it’s rated ‘R.’ And as Jamie mentioned earlier, his new album will hit stores on December 6th.