Jamie Foxx Quotes

Give it up for Ray Charles and his beautiful legacy. And thank you, Ray Charles, for living.

You know what? I never really factor Hollywood into anything. I'm a black actor, so I can't really control what Hollywood thinks. I gotta go do my thing, and my jokes have got to be funny. Whatever I do has got to be great.

We can't wave a magic wand and get rid of any of these people's problems, but what they want is they want to be heard.

I am a comedian and you guys know whatever I say, I don't mean any of it.

When your movie is hot, your options are crazy.

I think there's grays in characters if you look at all the great characters, those characters that have those layers of being good and being bad and what's the struggle. It's always more interesting to watch.

We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn't have a sort of influence. It does.

Having a stage name is like having a Superman complex. I go into the telephone booth as Eric Bishop and come out as Jamie Foxx.

I've been a sports fan all my life, and like most other actors, I'm convinced I could have been a pro athlete if Hollywood hadn't come calling.

I don't know if I'm built for marriage.

A woman's posterior is the key to my heart.

My worst hair experience was when I was trying to relax my hair and my grandmother did it. It went all straight and I looked like a black Bee Gee.

When you're an actor or actress in this business, usually the natural progression is to direct, but a lot of times, we don't get a chance to get to it. Myself, I really want to get into it. I want to be the person who eventually doesn't have to be in front of the camera.

I would say my grandmother would be like my personal god.

Every single thing in my life is built around race.

She still talks to me now, only now she talks to me in my dreams. And I can't wait to go to sleep tonight because we have a lot to talk about. I love you.

Yeah, anytime anybody has a kid, you know how you feel when you have a kid, you look at the world differently because your kid's in the world now. When it's just you, whatever happens happens but now you pay more attention to political things. You pay more attention to things because your daughter or your son has to deal with these circumstances.

Nobody wants to hear R&B. It's sad. If you want to be on the radio you got to stay young.

I didn't have a knee-jerk reaction like some people did to the language and the violence. My stepfather was a history teacher at Lincoln High School in Dallas. So, I was already familiar with the N-word and the brutality of slavery. What I was drawn to was the love story between Django and Broomhilda and how he defends and gets the girl in the end. I thought it was just an amazing and courageous project.

(I get to) kill all the white people... How great is that?

Will.i.am and I performed at Wango Tango. That's when my daughter said that I had made it in music.

Guys don't adapt as well as women do to getting their heart broken for the first time. It's tragic.

To be the leading man it's about the celebrity and the looks, and it's tough to do that. People who do it great are people like Tom Cruise and Will Smith - they're built for that. I ain't. I'm more of a character guy.

if I fail as Jamie Foxx, I'll just change my name and come back as something else.

The most interesting thing about acting is when you go to the dark places, that's a lot of energy. When you go to the happiest places, it's also a lot of energy.

Then I was playing the piano at eight, and that helps you learn about women because most of the people I was playing for were women.

Now ballads, I can mess around and get up on somebody on a ballad. People ain't seen it yet, but I can mess around and get up in there. I've had Ruben Studdard up in my house, Brian McKnight, Tank. Every once in a while I throw down with them.

You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.

Doc Rivers been hoarse since birth

A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play.

Quentin Tarantino is a hip-hop artist. I told him, "You're hip-hop!" You keep seeing surprises, and a clip here and there, because Quentin is hip-hop. A hip-hop artist will drop a single, leak something over here, and drop something over there 'cause he knows it's hot. He's on the spot with the way he does things.

I play a slave. How black is that? I have to wear chains. How whack is that? But don’t worry. I get free. I save my wife and I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?

And perfect happiness? Man, that's a...the pool is about 92 degrees, the Jacuzzi is about 102 and an avocado farm.

I think girls have to play a little hard to get because we come with so much bravado.

You are what you repeatedly do when things get hard.

All of us black comedians are trying to be mainstream, but you don't want to lose the edge.

What we do in New Orleans, man - we party!

My homies that are around me never give me that 'star pass'. I've hung out with some stars who are playing basketball and everyone let's them score all the baskets. Shooting pool, they let them make all the shots. My homies don't let me get away with that.

In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?

You guys have so much energy. I threw a party in Toronto and there were, like, 4,000 people who couldn't get in.

I never planned to win an Oscar. When I auditioned for Ray, I was just thinking about what a great project it would be.

Also, I think having that comic gene kind of makes you look at things in a different way. If you take yourself so seriously, eventually you end up one of those people having a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their lives. You see them drawing the curtains and they don't even realize that they've kind of drifted off somewhere.

Black people are the most talented people in the world.

I try to be as honest and open as I am with everything that I do because it’s just, um, It helps me, you know, like whether it’s stand up or singing or act. I just try to stay true.

What's weird is when you meet a girl who is 23 and you are talking to her, even her voice is high-pitched, she's young. You ask her how old she is, she says, 'Twenty-three, how old are you?' and when I tell her I'm 41 it's like I've just told her I have cancer. It's, 'Oh my God, how long have you had that?'

With Django Unchained, when you're dealing with slavery, it's like a gymnastics routine with the highest amount of difficulty. Quentin Tarantino is not going to do a movie that's just going to lay there and be safe. There's going to be twists and flips.

In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera.

I went to college on a classical piano scholarship. My grandmother made me practice one full hour a day. Every day. Man. I thought all she wanted was for me not to have any fun. Next thing you know, you have a career in music. Now, not everybody's going to go on and be Mozart or Michael Jackson. But music makes you smarter.