Even though he won an Oscar for his leading role in 'Ray', Jamie Foxx regards himself as a musician rather than an actor. For his new album he has called in favours from Snoop Dogg, Kanye West and Mary J Blige, he tells Brian Boyd
"I want to kiss your body while I take your freaking clothes off," says Jamie Foxx. It's very flattering but not how you expect to be greeted by a superstar, even in the basement suite of a posh Paris hotel. We haven't even shaken hands yet. It turns out that his entreaty is aimed at someone else, someone who would better qualify, in Foxx's view, as a hottie.
The actor and singer seems quite refreshed, considering that the tabloids are reporting that he pulled five women the night before. He asks politely, in French, for some crisps, fixes your gaze and turns on his megawatt charm. He begins by talking about Prince, then moves on to Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Oprah Winfrey, Kanye West and Will Smith. Anyone can do that, but Foxx has all of them on speed dial. And he can hilariously mimic every one.
The 38-year-old is only the fourth Oscar winner to have a number-one album in the US - the other three are Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand - and he's here today to launch the album in Europe. It's all he's supposed to be talking about, but with his copious cross references and conversational footnotes he ends up sounding like a pop historian: a Marvin Gaye story leads on to Berry Gordy and then Beyoncé Knowles.
"People know me as an actor because of Ray," he says, referring to the 2004 biopic of Ray Charles, in which he starred, "and think I'm an actor with an album out," he says. "That's just such a cliche, and it's something I'm always fighting against. I regard myself as a musician more than an actor."
To many people's surprise, Foxx is a classically trained musician who had no problem playing the piano parts in Ray. Born Eric Bishop, in Texas, he was playing piano from the age of three and, as a teenager, was considered such a prodigy that he was offered a scholarship to study classical piano, at a university in San Diego.
"When I met Ray Charles the first thing he noticed about me were my fingers," he says. "He picked up on my strong pianist fingers, and then he sat me down beside him. We were on dual pianos. He was singing the blues and I was singing along, and he told me if I could do the blues I could do anything. It's important for people to know that I'm a real piano player. After that, I have to show them I'm a real singer also."
While other actor-musicians tend to rigorously separate the two disciplines, Foxx believes they have a symbiotic relationship. "When I first met Al Pacino" - they worked together on the Oliver Stone film Any Given Sunday - "he told me a fascinating story. He said that to prepare for his role in The Godfather he would clamp on a big pair of headphones and listen to the same carefully selected piece of music all the time. He says that music develops your acting muscle, and what he was doing was using a certain piece of music to give him the voice he needed. And if you watch him in that film, he never raises his voice. He speaks with the same rhythm as the music he was listening to. To me, as a singer and an actor, that is incredible to hear."
As a singer, Foxx used his voice to prepare for one of his first major roles, as Bundini Brown, Muhammad Ali's trainer, in the 2001 film Ali. "I got Bundini through singing, and the way I got him was I realised that it was all about singing and then talking with an underbite. It was similar with Ray Charles. I got him by using an overbite" - in Ray, Foxx uses his own singing voice as well as lip-syncing.
If people were surprised that Foxx could act, play the piano and sing, it might be because of his struggle to shake off an early reputation as the poor man's Chris Rock. Despite his classical background, when Foxx arrived in Los Angeles, looking for his big break, the only work he could pick up was as a stand-up comic. Given his ability to mimic, his knack for storytelling and his manic energy, it comes as no surprise.
It was back in the tiny comedy clubs that he ditched the name Eric Bishop. "It just wasn't a showbiz name, and I was young and didn't know any better," he says. He was battling even to get an open spot - an unpaid try-out - and he noticed how female comics would usually get picked over male comics for the precious few that were going. He chose "Jamie" because he wanted a female-sounding name, to improve his chance of landing an open slot; "Foxx" was a tribute to the great black comic Redd Foxx. "Back then I was a black comic doing impersonations of Ronald Reagan. How mad is that?"
He slowly made an impression as a stand-up and was offered TV roles as wacky, high-energy young black guys. Music was why he had come to Los Angeles, though, so in 1994, while still a comic, he recorded Peep This, which limped to number 78 in the album chart.
With music-business doors being closed in his face, he featured in a series of forgettable films until Stone cast him opposite Pacino. After that he was picked for Ali, and then Tom Cruise asked him to star in Collateral, for which he was nominated for a best-supporting-actor Oscar. The same year he was also nominated as best actor, for Ray - and won.
"All this time, though, I'm thinking I'm a musician - I love acting but music is what I do," he says. "That's why I dropped out of college, dropped out of my scholarship - that's how serious I am."
It got so bad that when he was signed up to star alongside Colin Farrell (see panel) in the upcoming remake of Miami Vice, he assembled a small music studio in his trailer on the set of the film, in Florida. "It wasn't ideal, but I just put lots of candles all around the place and turned the lights down, to give it some sort of atmosphere," he says.
The album, which, oddly, he keeps referring to as his first, is called Unpredictable. On it, Foxx makes Barry White, the great Walrus of Love, sound like the Singing Nun. There's a lot of "honeys" and "hotties" here, a lot of smooth and sensual soul music and a lot of Marvin Gaye in this-one-goes-out-to-the-ladies mode.
"Marvin Gaye!" shouts Foxx. "Yes, you've got it. Let me tell you a story about Marvin Gaye. I met Harvey Fuqua once" - Fuqua worked at Motown and gave Gaye his break - "and he just loved my singing voice. One night he brought me back to where Marvin used to live. It was mad. I opened this drawer and found all these cassette tapes from the Sexual Healing sessions."
He pauses to execute an impressive human-beatbox rendition of the percussion on Sexual Healing. "Harvey was getting me to sing all these Marvin Gaye songs. It was pretty weird. I felt like Marvin Gaye's ghost or something, singing these songs in front of the man who discovered Marvin Gaye."
Being a charismatic man around town, Foxx invited a few friends to contribute to the new album. By a few friends he means Mary J Blige, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West - that's Foxx's voice you can hear on West's monster hit Gold Digger. He also roped in Timbaland, one of the best R&B producers around, to help shape the album.
He argues a very good case that Unpredictable has a functional value. "It's a lovemaking album, and it can be used to help your conversation along," he says. "What I mean is, when I was younger I would call a girl up and just play Luther Vandross down the phone to her. Seriously. You can't put it better than he did. And this generation know nothing about romance, really they don't. What do these young 18-year-olds know about talking to a woman?"
When Unpredictable was released in the US, late last year, it sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week; it has gone on to sell more than three million. "They had to put a parental-advisory sticker on it," he says. "I suppose I do get a bit raunchy on it at times, but you should hear some of the stuff that didn't make it on to the album."
He launches into Til I Met Your Sister, which didn't make the final cut. "You shouldn't have left me alone with her / She shouldn't have looked so damn good / I tried to walk away, but I'm just a man, try to understand / Girl, I never meant it to happen like that / She found out my weakness and there was no turning back / She put that thing on me and I couldn't handle it / All I know is til I, til I met your sister."
"That's going to be for the next album," he says. "And as happy as I am with this album, I'm sort of glad that it took me this long to have a hit record. If it had happened way back when I really wanted it to happen, I probably would have ended up in a boy band. You know, singing ballads and wearing a linen suit."
• Unpredictable is on BMG; Miami Vice is released in August
FOXX ON FARRELL
When Colin Farrell had his my-rehab-hell incident, late last year, he turned to Foxx for sanctuary. "Colin was at my crib, kicking it," says Foxx. "They were just trying to drag him down, and he's such a good guy, such a fun-loving guy. It was incredible working with him on Miami Vice [ left].
"What people don't get to see with him is how his mother and his sister are always around. When they're around he becomes just a big kid.
"I do believe he is a superstar in waiting. I've been in this business for 20 years, and with Colin I just took the chance to tell him that it really is a here-today-gone- tomorrow world.
"You see these actors, and they'll have about 10 bodyguards with them, and then you'll look over and you'll see Jack Nicholson getting into his car by himself. Colin knows all that. He's fine. A great actor and great fun to be around."
FOXX ON CHARLES
"When I was researching Ray Charles's life I came across an old tape of a radio interview he did sometime in the 1950s. Ray was speaking normally throughout the interview, but at one stage the interviewer asked him a question about his drug use" - Charles was a heroin addict - "and Ray stuttered a bit before answering. I took that stutter and used it in the film whenever Ray was in a tight spot."