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In the three short years since his Oscar winning performance in Ray Jamie Foxx has firmly established himself in the top rank of Hollywood leading men. Not that he would say so himself.
"I don't consider myself a movie star yet," he says modestly, "not when I
look at people like Will Smith and Tom Cruise."
His real break came eight years ago, when Sean 'Puffy' Combs dropped out of Oliver Stone's bone crunching football drama Any Given Sunday, providing a major boost for the hitherto journeyman actor.
Opportunity is one thing, but Foxx has proved adept at building upon the praise for his portrayal of a young quarterback who comes off the bench to make his mark, following it up with impressive performances in Ali, Collateral, Miami Vice and his portrayal of Ray Charles.
He returns to the action genre with The Kingdom, a film that seems to be a typically partisan American flag waver with Foxx leading an FBI team in Saudi Arabia as they investigate a suicide bomb attack on American citizens, only to reveal unsuspected depth in its final moments.
At a time when Hollywood seems to be coming into its own at expressing diverse - or at least alternate - political opinions, The Kingdom fulfils a service in its opening sequence which brilliantly explains modern Middle Eastern history. And the actor reveals that much of this was news to him.
"I knew that there was no money in Saudi Arabia until they found oil," he says. "The money changes everything, it changes the terrain, it changes where we want to be. If there's money anywhere, you know big business, they're going to be there. So I knew about that, but it was brilliant the way they put that together. You're really going 'wow, damn, I didn't know that,'."
An actor looking to maintain his status in a notoriously volatile business, or see his stock rise ever higher, has to be careful in the choices he makes at this point. For Foxx the prospect of a comedy after a run of tough dramas is particularly appealing right now.
"Right now comedies," he explains, "are either completely slapstick or they just completely miss. I was at a tribute for Al Pacino a while ago, and when we looked back on his body of work all those movies that may not have been huge box office, they were the ones where you went 'oh man!'. So you realise you don't have to rush, you can sort of take your time.
"Ellen Barkin gave me some great advice at a party. It blew my mind, I was sitting down and there was Warren Beatty, there's Ellen Barkin, I went 'this isn't really happening, is it?'. I was just standing there and Ellen Barkin comes over and says 'hey, if you chase the money, I will kick your.....' whatever. I asked her what she meant and she said 'don't chase the money! Do exactly what you're doing.'. And she walked off.
"My manager says, 'I think we're not supposed to chase the money! We should chase the art of it, and then hopefully somewhere the money will come,'. Then we'll find that great comedy, that thing that no-one has ever done before, but until that comes along we're going to remain on this path and keep hold of our integrity."
ANWAR BRETT
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