As a youngster being raised by his grandparents in Terrell, Texas, just outside of Dallas, Foxx—whose real name is Eric Bishop—had big dreams. “Just watching TV, listening to the radio, trying to figure it out,” he says. “[Thinking], ‘If I could get somewhere, man, I can do something.’ ” And so when he went to California in the ’80s on his piano scholarship, he often made the two-hour drive north to Los Angeles, at first trying to find places to showcase his musical talent, then ending up at the Sunset Strip comedy clubs when he saw that the folks onstage weren’t any funnier than he was. (“The ’80s were a great, fun-ass time,” he says of those days. “L.A. was black-hot—Janet Jackson was out. Now it’s white-hot—Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera—and they don’t know how to party.”) He changed his name to the less gender-specific Jamie Foxx, hoping it would help him get bookings, and worked harder at his stand-up than most of his competition did.

Director Taylor Hackford confers with Foxx.

“What I noticed about the whole cycle of L.A. is that if you stick in there long enough, you will make it, even though your talent may be subpar,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “It’s about your push, your hustle—it’s about getting in people’s faces and turning it your way.”

His hustle got him In Living Color and The Jamie Foxx Show, cementing his street cred. Roles in movies like Bait, The Player’s Club, and Booty Call kept the cash coming and built up his audience—but they didn’t provide the acting respect he craved. “I don’t want to be forty or fifty years old in the club telling the same joke: ‘Black people do this; white people do that.’ There’s only going to be two or three people that go to the audition that really have a chance. Everyone else is just filler. I had to get in that one-or-two category.”

He wasn’t the first choice for the role of Willie Beamen in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday, much like the third-string quarterback he portrays. But Foxx, a former high school QB, stepped into the pocket and had an intensive coaching experience. “Oliver Stone is an artist, man,” Foxx says. “He can party with you. Kick it with you. Talk shit to you. But at the end of the day it was artistry. He would ask you questions like, ‘What do you want to do with your life? You can’t want to be an actor, coming in here with this bullshit. Get your ass in here and work.’ He would say things to shake you up and get the best performance out of you, and that’s the best person to learn from.”

Great notices for his work in Sunday and in two Michael Mann movies, Ali and Collateral, followed. Now he has a choice: comedy or drama. “ ‘You need a big comedy, Jamie,’ ” Foxx says, mimicking one of his reps. “John Singleton says, ‘Don’t ever do a fuckin’ comedy again. Keep doing your stand-up, but no more comic movies, [or] you’ll fuck up what you got going.’

“You don’t want your legacy to be Booty Call,” he adds. “I got a thousand calls: ‘Let’s do Booty Called.’ I used to wonder how all these funny dudes weren’t making it, and my manager said the reason was they didn’t have a second gear.” Foxx took note and shifted into overdrive.