The ObserverMoviesJamie Foxx has always been a contender. But this year sees him stepping up to the premier league. He stole the show from Tom Cruise in Collateral, and now with his extraordinary portrayal of Ray Charles he's favourite to lift the Best Actor Oscar. Here, he talks to Gavin Edwards about probation, prosthetics and playing piano with the master

Jamie Foxx knows he's made a lot of bad movies: Breakin' All the Rules? 'Horrible.' Booty Call? 'There was no art in it.' Held Up? 'It sucked.' What's more, before shooting even started he knew those movies would be bad. (Admittedly, it's not too hard to calculate that Booty Call won't be collecting any awards.) So why did he do them?

'You gotta stay in the hunt,' Foxx says. 'You say, "Hey, our team is going to lose by 50 points, but I'm going to have 10 rebounds, 12 assists and eight steals. If I keep my stats up, somebody is going to say, "I scouted this kid playing at this junior college called Held Up."'

Before this year, Foxx may have been America's most underestimated actor. Now, his performance in Ray - the screen biography of Ray Charles - is being touted as the one to beat come Oscar time.

It's been a long journey. After an early-Nineties TV stint with In Living Color, Foxx had appeared in third-rate comedies and in his own sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show. As for dramatic roles, he came in through the back door. With any comedy script, he had to wait in line behind Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock and Chris Tucker. So he started taking supporting roles in high-profile movies: a cocky quarterback in Any Given Sunday, a poetic cornerman in Ali.

When Foxx got called up to the major leagues at the age of 36, he played like a champion: in this summer's Collateral he portrayed the cabbie terrorised by Tom Cruise's hit man and quietly stole the movie. And in Ray, he gives a stunning impersonation of Charles's mannerisms that then transcends them, as Charles struggles with his demons.

Foxx did the movie with prosthetic eyelids over his eyes, rendering him blind; assistants had to lead him on and off the set. After an initial wave of panic and hyperventilation, he found that being temporarily sightless helped him enter Charles's world. To stay awake in the dark, he would have to hug himself and rock in place. 'After six hours of being blind, you lose the sense of how a person is physically,' Foxx says. 'It was amazing to hear the little buzzing voices all around you.'

Foxx's performance hits the Academy's favourite statuette-dispensing buttons of 'blind' and 'beloved figure who recently died', but also has the virtue of being really good. The most succinct review so far, however, has come from Cruise; after seeing a screening of Ray, he phoned Foxx at 1am to say: 'Jamie Foxx, you motherfucker!'

We're at Delmonico's, a restaurant near Foxx's home in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Wearing a Tupac T-shirt, he gradually slouches in the banquette until he's resting on his side, propped up by an elbow.

Foxx has two sets of metaphors he uses to describe himself. The first is Foxx as athlete: making his portrayal of Ray Charles authentic was 'like sticking the landing after the floor exercise'. The second is Foxx as messiah: 'I was sent. I'm supposed to be here for some reason.'

In April 2003, Foxx was arrested at Harrah's casino in New Orleans on a battery charge for assaulting a police officer (he eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour - disturbing the peace - receiving two years' probation, a six-month suspended sentence and a $1,500 fine). Foxx says he was initially just trying to defuse the situation, in which his sister got manhandled. 'I learnt the lesson that sometimes you just have to back up,' says Foxx. 'And they learnt that if you touch my sister, I'm going to bring everything.'

Foxx has always had this feeling of destiny. Born Eric Bishop on 13 December 1967, he grew up in Terrell, Texas, just east of Dallas, a town so repressive he recalls getting in trouble for moonwalking. But he rejects the notion that comedy must be born from pain: 'I've had it good,' he says, while admitting his upbringing was a little complicated: at seven months, after his parents had split up, young Eric was adopted by his grandparents, the same couple who had adopted his mother 13 years earlier. His biological parents came by to visit. And though he still sees each of them occasionally, he describes his relationship with them as 'strained'.

His childhood friend, Gilbert Willie, remembers that when he was seven, Eric would say his career goal was to be a stand-up comedian and singer. He was so adept at making his second-grade class laugh that the teacher used him as a reward: if the class behaved, Eric would tell them jokes.

In high school, Eric was quarterback of the football team - which means an even hotter spotlight in Texas than elsewhere. 'That was pressure,' Foxx says with a fond smile. After graduation, he went to the United States International University in San Diego on a music scholarship. He soon moved to LA to pursue his dream of being a balladeer in the style of Lionel Richie. On a dare, he got onstage at a comedy club's open-mic night. Doing the impressions that had made his football team-mates laugh, he found they went down well here, too. Eric Bishop started working under androgynous names, trying to get some extra time at clubs eager to book female comics. Jamie Foxx was the one that stuck. 'Eric Bishop - I had to change some things about him to make it in this business,' Foxx says. 'Eric Bishop would be too much the nice guy sometimes, but there are places I go that nobody knows.'

Foxx continued to dream of a music career - in 1994, he released an R&B album, Peep This, which was widely ignored. But this spring he sang the hook on the hit single 'Slow Jamz', a collaboration with Kanye West and Twista, and has now signed a deal with Clive Davis's J Records. So, when I visit Foxx's home, he's working in his studio. It's small but professional, and includes an isolation booth for Foxx's vocals. His producer and friend, N8 Walton, cues up a track they have been working on - a slow jam called 'With You'.

It's got a lush piano part and lyrics such as: 'I'm not a player, but I'm still a man.' Foxx cranks up the volume and does a little shimmying dance to the song. He's got a fine, gospel-inflected voice. The chorus is a rap that sounds as if it were done by the late Notorious BIG.

'I have my own religion,' says Foxx. 'That religion is Jamie's Love, and my religion is infinity. I'm putting a velvet rope around the world.' Foxx has become well known as a player with the ladies: a single superstar with three Rolodexes' worth of phone numbers. 'I'm the greatest boyfriend,' he insists. 'I'm a Southern gentleman. I bring her flowers. If we fly to Mexico, we'll get separate rooms.' He might even dispose of the photographs he took in bed - although apparently, he won't shred them first. Construction worker Mark Pithian says he found 90 nude shots of Foxx and a woman in a dumpster outside his Las Vegas home earlier this year and that, despite a visit from five thugs that put him in hospital, he plans to sell them to the tabloids. (Foxx's camp has said the pictures are stolen.)

I ask Foxx what the best rumour he ever heard about himself was. He cites a tabloid headline: 'Jamie Foxx makes a fan his gay sex toy'. 'It was hysterical,' he says.

Then I ask what seems like a logical follow-up question: has he ever been romantically interested in a man ? Foxx becomes alarmed. 'Fuck, no!' he declares, and then, calling the question 'bugged-out', wonders why I'd ask it at all. 'But if you freak out too much, people say, "He must be homophobic,"' he says, and drops the topic. The same sports-based worldview that gives Foxx his relentless drive can also make some areas out of bounds and leave some notions outside his velvet rope.

In Foxx's back yard, he has a basketball court emblazoned with a 'Foxx Hole' logo. Having changed into shorts and a knee brace, he joins three friends for a 13-point game of two-on-two hoops. Foxx moves gracefully and plays well inside, but he connects on his outside shot only 5 per cent of the time. Undaunted, he launches one long-distance bomb after another, only to see them keep rattling off the rim. His trash-talking ability - 'Body looks great, but there ain't no exercises for the head' - isn't putting points on the board, and his team falls behind, 8-3. Foxx starts pretending he's Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas. 'C'mon, Zeke! C'mon, Zeke!' he tells himself, and something amazing happens - now that he's playing a part, he starts making more shots. 'Zeke! Zeke! Zeke!' he shouts, and ends up winning 13-11.

I ask Foxx how he pictures himself when he's 70. 'I'll still be connected in this business, but not in it,' he says. 'Hopefully, I'll find contentment without the grind and the energy. The only thing that scares me is: how am I going to turn this off?'

· Ray will be released nationwide on 21 January 2005

When Jamie met Ray

How meeting the master turned into a musical baptism of fire

Once Ray director Taylor Hackford decided that Jamie Foxx was the man to play Ray Charles, he took him to meet the man himself (this was back in 2002 - Charles died of liver disease in June). Hackford reports: 'Ray's attitude was, "You're going to play me? Well, prove it."' Charles started playing the piano and demanded Foxx follow his lead. As long as the idiom was blues or gospel, Foxx could keep up; but then Charles started throwing in some Thelonious Monk. Foxx has no jazz training, and when he stumbled through the phrasing, Charles started ribbing him: 'Why'd you hit that wrong note? It's right under your finger!'

'Jamie kept trying,' Hackford adds. 'He didn't melt, didn't wilt.' Charles was impressed by his sang-froid as much as his piano skills. He shouted, 'The kid's got it!'

Hackford had wanted Foxx to spend time with Charles. Foxx resisted, not wanting to absorb the mannerisms and essence of a 70-year-old man. So, instead, Foxx studied tapes of Charles on a Fifties LA radio programme and as a guest on the Dinah Shore Show in the Sixties. 'It was that young, energetic Ray Charles,' Foxx says. 'But there was a point where Dinah Shore says, "Talk about the drugs, Ray." And he paused for five seconds, and then he started to stutter. So I took that as nuance.

'The fact that Ray Charles didn't have his eyesight - that's not even my major struggle,' adds Foxx. 'It's "How can I birth this beautiful music and maintain my integrity, no matter how wicked Ray gets with the drugs and the women?" It'll be interesting to see how kids react to it. They'll find out who was the Puffy before all of this, he started it.'

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