Taylor Hackford, it turns out, is also very good at doing voices. This is his impression of various studio executives who, for more than a decade, rejected his efforts to bring Ray Charles’s story to the screen. “ ‘Biopics, they don’t work,’ ” says the dapper, white-haired and -bearded director sarcastically, glancing around his temporary postproduction office in Santa Monica. “ ‘Biopics belong on television. And black biopics? Who wants to see that?’ It’s a cold, tough business.”

Despite a filmography that includes the hits An Officer and a Gentleman and Devil’s Advocate and the documentary Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll!, Hackford couldn’t get anyone to bankroll his vision. He didn’t see it as a black story, but as one that could appeal to the crossover audience that responded to Charles’s unique blend of gospel, gritty blues, jazz, and country music.

“Ray Charles was a revolutionary to me,” says Hackford. “He changed not just American music, but American culture. What that music did was as much integrating America as all of the Freedom Rides and legislation. When you put that music in white teenagers’ bedrooms, you can’t turn around and say those people are inferior.”

Enter billionaire financier Philip Anschutz, owner of the Staples Center and the Los Angeles Kings, among other concerns. He wanted to be in the movie business too, so he founded the Anschutz Film Group, which includes Walden Media and Bristol Bay Productions. And instead of asking anyone for money to do Ray, he wrote the check himself, for a reported $40 million. “He loved Ray Charles and decided to make this movie,” Hackford says simply. Now the director needed a star—one who knew his way around a keyboard and could pull off both the humor and gravitas of Charles’s complex personality, honed by a life that included going blind from glaucoma, battling heroin addiction, and refusing to play segregated concert dates.

Hackford laughs when he talks about the first time he met Charles, years ago in Charles’s office at the now landmark RPM Studios. “He doesn’t have a cane. He doesn’t have a dog. There’s furniture in the way. He steps out of the way. No one’s helping him. ‘Hey, man, you see the Dodgers last night? Was that a game or what?!’ You’re thrown back, like this is the biggest hoax that’s ever been perpetrated. This guy can see. He’s that confident.”

In Foxx, who attended San Diego’s United States International University (now Alliant International University) on a classical piano scholarship, Hackford felt he had everything he needed. But there was one more person to impress. “Anyone that worked with Ray will tell you, he was not an easy man,” says Hackford. “He was a fantastic man, and he was generous. But he was tough when it came down to work. He expected to get the best out of anybody that came up to him—or get the hell out. There were a couple of pianos sitting side by side, and he sat Jamie down and started working him over. He wasn’t just evaluating the musician, he was really evaluating the man.”

“ ‘Now why would you hit that note?!’ ” says Foxx, imitating Charles’s voice and mannerisms as he recalls that meeting. “ ‘It’s right up under your fingers. CLANK CLANK CLANK.’ ” Foxx pretends to hit the keys. “ ‘You feel it?’ ”

“The pressure was on,” Hackford says. “Jamie showed me something that day—instead of getting flustered and walking out, he stayed with it. He got it. Ray stood up, hugged himself, and said, ‘This is the guy! He can do it.’ ”

After that, Hackford says, the door was open for Foxx to spend as much time as he wanted with Charles. But the actor chose to do just the opposite, listening instead to Charles’s old interviews and recordings from the early years. “Jamie said, ‘If I channel that guy, that’s 73 years old. That’s not the guy I’m playing.’ Very few people in the acting business are as smart as Jamie is.”