Jamie Foxx

Given a strict Baptist church upbringing in a racially segregated area of Texas, Jamie Foxx had piano lessons from the age of five and became pianist and choir leader at the Terrell New Hope Baptist Church. At school he shone at basketball and American football and planned to join the Dallas Cowboys, but his plans were diverted after joining the band Leather & Lace and winning a scholarship to study classical music and composition at United States International University in California. He changed his name to Jamie Foxx in 1989 when he started appearing at comedy clubs, leading to his breakthrough into television when he joined the cast of comedy sketch show In Living Color. In 1996 Foxx starred in his own sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show and made his movie debut in Toys (1992), followed by various other high profile roles. His musical career, effectively started in 1994 with his first album Peep This. It flopped, but in 2004 Foxx hit the top of the charts when he featured on Slow Jamz by the rapper Twista. He also collaborated on singles with Ludacris, Field Mob and Kanye West before releasing his 2005 album Unpredictable, which topped the US album chart and reached Number 9 in the UK. Including collaborations with Lil Wayne, T-Pain, T-I, The-Dream and Kanye West, third album Intuition (2008) was similarly successful, including the singles Just Like Me, She Got Her Own and Blame It.