* Jamie Foxx’s mother’s adoptive parents adopted Jamie as an infant and raised him in the Baptist faith. His biological father, Darrell Bishop, eventually converted to Islam and changed his name to Shahid Abdula.
* After completing high school, Foxx studied classical music and composition at United States International University. In 1989 he began performing stand-up routines at comedy clubs. Noticing that those establishments commonly booked female comedians in preference to males, Foxx selected the stage name “Jamie” for its androgyny, in hopes of fooling club owners into thinking they were booking a woman. He took the surname “Foxx” in tribute to the legendary comedian Redd Foxx.
* Jamie Foxx broke into the television industry in 1991 when he joined the cast of the comedy program In Living Color. He subsequently played a recurring role in the comedy-drama series Roc, and then starred in his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show, from 1996-2001.
* Foxx also pursued a film career, making his debut in the 1992 comedy Toys. His first dramatic role came in 1999, when he portrayed a hard-living football player in Oliver Stone‘s Any Given Sunday. In 2004 Foxx was cast as taxi driver Max Durocher in the Tom Cruise film Collateral. That same year, he portrayed the singer Ray Charles in the biopic Ray, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. After subsequently appearing in such box-office hits as Jarhead (2005), Miami Vice (2006), Dreamgirls (2006), and The Kingdom (2007), Foxx was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2007.
* In May 2007, Foxx launched The Foxxhole, a comedy channel on Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. Two years later, he played major roles in the dramatic film The Soloist and the thriller Law Abiding Citizen.
* While gaining acclaim as an actor and radio personality, Foxx also cultivated a career in music. His debut album, Peep This, was released in 1994, but his breakthrough came a decade later when he collaborated on the hit song “Slow Jamz” with rap artists Twista and Kanye West. Foxx’s subsequent albums were titled Unpredictable (2005), Intuition (2008), and Best Night of My Life (2010).
* In an April 2003 incident, Foxx and an entourage of seven people walked into Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans and refused to comply with security guards’ request that they show some form of identification. When the guards persisted in their request, Foxx used profanity and launched into a loud tirade, at which point the security officers asked him to leave. When he still refused, casino authorities called police. But according to the police, Foxx “became more irate and started yelling profanities.” Pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace, Foxx was sentenced to a six-month suspended jail term with two years probation and a $1,500 fine.
* During an April 2009 episode of The Jamie Foxx Show on Foxxhole Radio, Foxx and his co-hosts—while discussing an incident where teenaged singer Miley Cyrus had publicly complained about being snubbed by the British band Radiohead following the most recent Grammy Awards program—delivered a litany of disparaging, profanity-laced jokes regarding Cyrus. While one co-host called her a “little white bitch,” Foxx urged Cyrus: “Make a sex tape and grow up. Get like Britney Spears and do some heroin. Do like Lindsay Lohan and start seeing a lesbian and get some crack in your pipe. Catch chlamydia on a bicycle seat. That’s what I want.”