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"FacebookPinterest\n\nEric Bishop returned to Terrell, Texas, to bury the woman who raised him. Who took him in when he was 7 months old because his real mama just couldn't deal, who kicked his butt and sewed his clothes and dragged him to church and made him learn to play the piano when he was 5\u2014the skill that landed him the lead role in Ray\u2014so convinced was Estelle Marie Talley that music would come in handy someday.\n\nEric Bishop always returns to Terrell. This time he returned in a limousine. The funeral would have to be somewhat private, because Eric Bishop was now Jamie Foxx, and he couldn't just show up at the Sonic (his favorite burger place in town) or the high school football field where he threw all his touchdown passes or the Bethlehem Baptist Church, where he was the choirboy everybody came to hear, without being mobbed.\n\nAnd besides, this was Miz Talley's day.\n\nEric Bishop returned to Terrell, Texas, to bury the woman who raised him. Who took him in when he was 7 months old because his real mama just couldn't deal, who kicked his butt and sewed his clothes and dragged him to church and made him learn to play the piano when he was 5\u2014the skill that landed him the lead role in Ray\u2014so convinced was Estelle Marie Talley that music would come in handy someday.\n\nEric Bishop always returns to Terrell. This time he returned in a limousine. The funeral would have to be somewhat private, because Eric Bishop was now Jamie Foxx, and he couldn't just show up at the Sonic (his favorite burger place in town) or the high school football field where he threw all his touchdown passes or the Bethlehem Baptist Church, where he was the choirboy everybody came to hear, without being mobbed.\n\nAnd besides, this was Miz Talley's day.\n\nFor nearly eleven years, Alzheimer's had ravaged her mind, but she always knew\u2014he could just tell by the way she'd light up\u2014when Jamie was in the room. There is no one in the dusty, gritty, stubborn little town of Terrell, Texas, who believes Eric Bishop would have become Jamie Foxx without the love of the woman who lay in the casket that day.\n\nShe died at 95. Or as Jamie puts it, \"God leased her out to us for 95 years.\" He was too broken up to deliver the eulogy, so he asked his oldest and best friend from Terrell, Gilbert Willie Jr., to do it. His legs start to shake when he talks about Estelle. \"She was my buddy, you know what I'm saying If you could go to heaven right now And say, 'Where is Estelle Talley' Do that interview. Because that's who knows me. Nobody else.\" He shakes his head. \"Nobody else.\"\n\nEstelle would pass just before the boy she whupped into shape and believed in from the start would be nominated for three Golden Globes.\n\n\"She had on a cream outfit, a cream dress,\" he remembers. \"Her face was built up a little bit, so she looked\u2014it didn't quite look like her. But her hands\u2014her hands were like, wow, I remember those hands. I remember those hands slappin' the hell out of me. I remember those hands wipin' tears from my face. I remember those hands spanking me on my ass and saying, 'You get in there and you play that piano.' Those hands had me stuck at the casket.\" He starts to cry. \"I was stuck. I couldn't move.\"\n\nA few weeks after the funeral, in a place far, far away from Terrell\u2014which is to say, L.A.\u2014 Jamie Foxx is doing what everyone in Hollywood dreams of doing, but few ever can being the next big thing.\n\nTonight he is doing it at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. \"Hook us up,\" he says to the ma\u00EEtre d', who knows better than to ask him to order from the menu. Jamie is a regular here now, along with every major player in Hollywood, who will, in the course of the night, come over to suck up and tell him how great he is. How great he was in Ray. How amazing he was in Collateral. How this is His Time, His Year. How much they've always loved him and would love to hang out with him more.\n\nMiz Talley taught Jamie how to cut through the b.s., so he doesn't believe every word that they say. Like he tells his best friend, Gilbert, when they talk on the phone, \"I hate all these phonies in L.A.\" But here, at the Atable at Mr. Chow, he is gracious to every phony who approaches him and fawns pathetically. \"It is what it is,\" he likes to say.\n\nJamie is such hot shit right now that you'd think he was an overnight sensation. Of course, they never are. Jamie's road to greatness began when he stood up in his secondgrade class in Terrell and announced that he planned to be a standup comedian and musician. When he first got to L.A., in 1989, the best job he could get was selling shoes at Thom McCann. He did standup on the side. He'd call his best friend, Gil Please don't tell my granny that I'm not making it. Then he got the big TV break, with a role on In Living Color. \"But the hardest time, careerwise, was when that was over,\" says Jamie. \"No more calls. 'You had your shot, that's it.' It was like Hollywood had closed up.\" There were times when he thought he'd have to return to Terrell with his tail between his legs. But then he got his first movie break\u2014by using one of his talents from high school. He landed the role of the quarterback in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday\u2014opposite Al Pacino\u2014because Stone's first choice for the role, Sean \"Puffy\" Combs, supposedly threw like a girl. When he first started to make money, he spent it on clothes and food. \"You know, basic stuff. You ain't never got money, you don't know what the hell to get! But you know you're hungry. You know you want some 'linen and shrimp,' as I call it. It was the linenandshrimp binge.\"\n\nSo has he written his Oscar acceptance speech yet\n\n\"I wrote it when I was 3.\"\n\nThe ma\u00EEtre d' comes over and wants to know if it will be just two for dinner tonight. Apparently, he is used to Jamie traveling with a larger entourage. \"Yeah, two,\" Jamie says. \"It's intimate. It's an intimate night. Intimate.\"\n\nExcept for the parade of asskissers.\n\n\"Jaaaaamie!\"\n\n\"Hey, man!\" he says. \"Great to see you!\"\n\n\"You were great. Amazing,\" says the first studio ecutive to come pay him homage. He is with several other entertainment bigwigs and a gorgeous blond.\n\n\"You know me from a young pup,\" Jamie offers.\n\n\"I do,\" says the studio guy. \"And this is It for you now.\"\n\n\"This is It now\" asks Jamie. \"Well, we're gonna try to keep It on.\"\n\n\"And you're gonna keep It on!\" says the white guy, trying to jive. \"This is Kate, by the way.\"\n\n\"You're very beautiful,\" Jamie says to Kate. \"Look at your face. Where are you from...You're from Oregon Look at you! I gotta get me to Oregon.\"\n\n\"She just finished shooting The Transporter 2 in Miami,\" offers the studio guy.\n\n\"Ah,\" says Jamie, as if impressed. \"Well, very beautiful. Good seeing you again!\"\n\nWho was that, I ask.\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nThe previous Friday night, Jamie is at Corbin Bowl in Tarzana (a decidedly nonBeverly Hills part of L.A.), where nobody knows who the fuck he is\u2014and he likes it that way. It reminds him of the bowling alley in Terrell.\n\nJamie comes here a lot. He likes to bowl in the afternoon and show up for karaoke night, where no one in the audience\u2014until recently\u2014had a clue that the guy who'd get up and belt out \"YMCA\" (\"my best song,\" says Jamie) was the shit in Hollywood. Now the word has spread, which has sort of ruined it for Jamie. He waits for the pins to be set up while Sherman, his personal assistant, fetches some Cokes. He and Sherman have $100 riding on the first game, and they take turns screaming things to break each other's balls and concentration. \"Eric Bishop!\" yells Sherman, as Jamie rolls his first ball into the gutter. On his second try, he hits one pin. \"This might be the only thing I'm not good at,\" says Jamie. \"It takes real precision to hit one pin.\"\n\nOf course, he will end up winning.\n\nBetween frames, he and Sherman break into a repertoire of impressions\u2014from Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver to Fred MacMurray in My Three Sons\u2014as a few other bowlers, who have no idea they're in the presence of greatness, start to get pissed off. Then he gets made.\n\n\"Ray Charles!\" The collective yelp comes from a gaggle of\n\n14yearold girls on a school trip who suddenly come charging.\n\nDoes that bother him \"Are you kidding I love it.\"\n\nJamie has little patience for stars who whine about their privacy being invaded or how difficult it is to be famous. But then again, he's still on the verge. He has just hired his first fulltime security person, a guy named Rashan. \"But I'm still everybody's homeboy,\" he says.\n\nHe does admit that his new fame has put a cramp in his partying. Jamie's bashes\u2014at the somewhat modest (by star standards) gated home he keeps in Tarzana\u2014are legendary. He takes great pride in the fact that he spends no more than $250 on hot dogs from Ralphs and everyone has a blast. But now, \"with this Ray Charles thing...I gotta change. Things are changing.\" No more taking boy reporters out on allnight drinking binges. No more letting every ho into his house. \"Now, you know, people are showin' up who may not be on the list, and you have to be careful, because you don't want anything bad to happen right now.\"\n\nYou mean, before the Oscars\n\n\"Well, you know, some silly thing happens, and all of a sudden you're caught up in it, you know\"\n\nIt's pretty hard, says Jamie, to keep it real. He's determined to never become a Hollywood asshole, even if he wins an Oscar. \"I'm not even worried,\" he says. \"Because I'm a southern gentleman. You don't know the creeeeed of the southern gentleman A southern gentleman takes the good, bad, ugly, all of it, but he remains a gentleman. That's what I was taught; that's how I was brought up.\" Too many people out here, he says, are too caught up in \"'I ain't got the new Bentley; I ain't got the big house on the beach.' Who cares\"\n\nHe's in the parking lot now at Corbin Bowl, about to get into his big new yellow ride.\n\nNice car.\n\n\"Oh, that's a Bentley,\" he says. Uhhuh. \"It's a collector's item. There's only two in the world. One here and one in London.\" Pause. \"I'm not a real big car person.\" Uhhuh. \"But that car used to sitout on Rodeo Drive. I used to see that car and say, 'Man!'\"\u2014he whistles\u2014\"'That's the most beautiful car I've ever seen.'\"\n\nJamie speeds off in his new yellow Bentley, terribly apologetic that we can't meet for the next few days because he'll be just so busy, what with the American Music Awards and \"boot camp\" and everything.\n\nJamie is in the process of filming the new Sam Mendes movie, Jarhead, in which he plays a marine in the first gulf war. It's grueling, this Jarhead thing. The poor guy had to shave his head, get tattooed, and go through military training, like, constantly. All weekend, in fact.\n\nThat Sunday morning Four beautiful bikinied women are lounging at the pool of L.A.'s Mondrian hotel. They are not at all stupid, despite the fabulous breasts. They are whispering excitedly about the night before. Every other word is \"Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.\"\n\nNah. Couldn't be.\n\nThen one is on her cell phone to a friend back east Guess who they met last night Jamie Foxx. Yeah, that Jamie Foxx. The guy in Ray. Wasn't Ray fucking fabulous Partied with him till the sun came up. Right here at the Mondrian. They met him at some party, then he came to their room at four thirty in the morning! Knocked on their door with a bunch of his friends. They danced, drank, played CDs\u2014he was so funny! And a really nice guy. He did all these impressions. And he promised to take them all to the American Music Awards tonight! They were all switching their flights, to stay an extra night.\n\nNow. Monday night, at Mr. Chow\n\nSo tell me about your weekend.\n\n\"Stayed at home.\"\n\nYou didn't.\n\n\"I did.\"\n\nAll weekend\n\nWell, there was the awards thing, and boot camp. Whew. Grueling. \"But there really wasn't anything else to do. Nothing to go out for.\" Plus, he was so tired. From boot camp.\n\nYou sure you didn't, maybe, stay at the Mondrian one night\n\n\"Did I stay at the Mondrian\" He gives me his poker face. \"Which night\"\n\nSaturday, maybe\n\n\"Ohhhhhhhh.\" He slaps the table like it's just occurred to him. \"We did stay at the Mondrian Saturday night.\"\n\nHe orders his second dirty martini up. And marvels at the fact that, gosh, we were all staying at the Mondrian!\n\n\"Okay,\" says Jamie. \"They came to our room and knocked on our door.\" Uhhuh. \"Yeaaaas. And got turned away.\" Uhhuh. \"See, okay, we were in the room, and we get these knocks on the door...\" Wait a minute Why check in to the Mondrian when you live in L.A. Because he can. Okay. \"So anyway, we were in the room.... I guess the girls trailed us...\"\n\nHe then proceeds to give a very long explanation of what didn't happen.\n\nThey just exaggerated all of this\n\n\"Of course!\" says Jamie. \"They're supposed to. Wouldn't you That's what it's all about.\"\n\n(The girls never did get tickets to the American Music Awards.)\n\nSo what kind of women does Jamie Foxx like\n\n\"A woman's posterior is the key to my heart,\" he says, in his honeydipped voice. \"I know it sounds weird, but I come from Texas. And when I used to play hideandgoseek, the girl that I would find, she was a little more round. And I got a pulse from just finding that girl.\" He's sounding an awful lot like Marvin Gaye here. \"And I thirst for that still. I like bigboned women. I like curves. I like to feel them. That's what drives me. That southern build. That's the realness.\"\n\n\"We call them greyhounds,\" says Gil. \"He likes 'em big. He likes them 150, 160. He has this saying Cute in the face, big in the waist.\"\n\nSo we take it you don't like skinny L.A. bitches\n\n\"Not at all. I remember the first girl I had a crush on when I was a kid\u2014Tonya Derrick. We kinda looked like the number ten.\"\n\nWe hear you have a commitment problem.\n\n\"A commitment problem Of course I do! I'm a man. Jesus Christ. Of course I got a commitment problem! Any man that tells you he doesn't have a commitment problem, he's lying. The way I see it, you stay uncommitted and you die an old, lonely m.f. Or you stay committed and you die a miserable m.f.\" (M.f. Jamie laughs. He's too much of a southern gentleman to say motherfucker.)\n\nBy the end of the night at Mr. Chow, Jamie's party has grown significantly. The rapper Akon (\"he has the number one record in the country, this cat\") pulls up a chair. Sylvia Rhone, the president of Motown Records, plops herself on his lap. \"You channeled Ray,\" says Sylvia, \"like I've never fucking seen before!\"\n\nHe orders another dirty martini and two bottles of Dom P\u00E9rignon.\n\n\"Jaaaamieeee!\" A voluptuous Star Jonesbutprettier lookalike throws her arms around his neck. \"The world is not safe right now!\" says Jamie. In fact, she says she is moonlighting for Celebrity Justice and wants to ask him a question about a rumor that's flying. \"That there's pictures of you having sex,\" she explains. Welcome to superstardom, Mr. Foxx. \"You just tell me it's not true, and I'll say on Celebrity Justice that I saw Jamie and it's not true.\"\n\nJamie smiles.\n\nIt's true\n\n\"Somebody broke into the crawl space in my house in Vegas and found some pictures,\" he says with the same casualness he has when ordering bottles of Dom. \"Here's what you can tell everybody There's no farm animals involved. There's no men involved. And to be honest with you They're nice.\n\nTo get to the house Jamie Foxx grew up in, you pass the strip with the Waffle House and Motel 6, and eventually you hit the railroad tracks. Above the tracks, everyone is white. Below the tracks, everyone is black.\n\nJamie's biological mother, Louise, is peeking through the curtains of that house. The house on the wrong side of the tracks. But she will not answer the door. Not even for Gilbert Willie Jr. \"She gets like this,\" says Gil. \"She doesn't want to answer the tough questions.\" It's a complicated story. When Jamie was 7 months old, Louise gave him up, and her own mother, Estelle Marie Talley, took him in. Estelle was the only mother he ever knew\u2014and for that he is eternally grateful.\n\nIt was Miz Talley who drove Jamie once a week to north Dallas for piano lessons. And Miz Talley who dragged him to church every week at Bethlehem Baptist, where she always sat in the same row (\"that's Miz Talley's row\") and where Jamie would become the star of the choir. And Miz Talley who sewed him a red jacket with zippers, just like Michael Jackson's, when Jamie begged for one. \"I wanted that jacket so bad,\" he says. \"And my grandmother said (he channels her voice), 'I ain't gonna spend all this money on that damn jacket!' So she made the jacket. But it was so horrible, it looked so bad. It was the worst. And she made me wear it. I had to play for a wineandcheese party at this real nice area, and I was like 14, and she made me wear the damn Michael Jackson suit. And they took a picture of me, and it ended up in the papers. I felt so bad.\"\n\nIt was Miz Talley who put up a fight when he wanted to play football\u2014\"Why waste your time with that b.s.\"\u2014and Gil and Gil's father had to intervene. Jamie became the star quarterback, plus the best high jumper in track (and he played basketball, baseball, and the cornet). But he still sang and played piano every Sunday at church, or Miz Talley would have whupped his ass. He got so good at the piano that another church, New Hope Baptist, started paying him $75 a week. Miz Talley took the checks while Jamie bitched to everyone about \"how mean his granny was.\" Until it was time to buy his first car, an old Volkswagen, and Miz Talley handed over the $3,000 she'd tucked away.\n\nLouise was nowhere. Nor was Jamie's biological father. Robert Daniels, who coached him in track and football, believes that all Jamie wanted was for his real dad to show up at a game or a track meet. Just once. But it never happened. Not even when he went to the state championship.\n\nJamie didn't like to dwell on it, but Gil knew that Jamie was always desperate for something, anything, from his parents. Still is, Gil says, still trying to have a relationship with Louise. There was a fear that when he became famous\u2014and rich\u2014she might come around. But it's Jamie who tries, who invites her to L.A.; he'd even take her to the Oscars if she'd go. But she won't. \"She doesn't ask for anything from him,\" says Gil, \"but he wishes she would.\"\n\n\"It's just kind of like, my arms are open if you wanna get the hug,\"\n\nJamie explains. \"And if you don't, my arms are still open.\"\n\nIt's Gil who fields the requests from the rest of the relatives in\n\nTerrell\u2014who needs their rent paid, who needs a box of diapers.\n\nJamie writes the checks. Gil himself needs nothing from Jamie. \"He's a selfmade millionaire,\" says Jamie proudly. Gil's a contractor in\n\nTerrell, and a warm and kind guy. \"He's real people,\" says Jamie. There is no one Jamie trusts more.\n\nWhat's amazing is that Louise raised two other kids\u2014two daughters\u2014who now live with and are supported by Jamie in L.A. His halfsister Deidra is a hairdresser and \"a real fireplug.\" \"Jamie Foxx my ass!\" she tells me. His other halfsister, Diondra, has Down syndrome. When he decided to move them into his home, Gil and his other friends worried.\n\n\"'Can you handle all this, Jamie You sure you can deal' And I said, 'You know what If I can't take care of my sister who has Down syndrome, what will people think of me' Sittin' up in Mr. Chow, drinking Dom P\u00E9rignon and doing interviews with GQ. And my sister is somewhere...\" His voice trails off. \"So, no, we won't have any of that.\"\n\nHe also took in his stepfather. Which is to say, Louise's \"second or third exhusband.\" He moved in when he was released from jail a few years ago. How did Jamie ever get close to him, I wonder. \"Sports,\" he says. \"My stepfather's into sports. When I was running track, I'd always be looking for my stepfather [in the stands].\" Sometimes he'd stand outside the fence and say, 'C'mon, man!' And I'd make it,\" says Jamie. \"I'd make the high jump.\"\n\n\"I don't need much,\" he says. \"I'm like a cactus\u2014you don't have to water me; you don't have to tend to me every day.\"\n\nWhen his stepfather went to jail for three years on a drug rap, Jamie wrote him only one letter. \"I felt that he let me down. He let himself down. He was a good man, a coach, a real bluecollar guy, who made some mistakes.\" But when he got out, \"I said, 'You are gonna live with me.' I got his parole changed. I said, 'I will save your life, because your kids are something special. So you're all gonna live with me, and you're gonna understand what it takes to do it 100 percent.' Because he did do it 98 percent. He just made a few mistakes. Well, he made a lot of mistakes. But it's helped the family to help him with his mistakes. To throw him away would be like to throw my sister away.\"\n\nAnd his real father\n\n\"He traded off,\" says Jamie. He explains that his father, who lives in Dallas and rarely sees him, is a Muslim, and \"his religion has kept us apart.\" Gil says Jamie's dad gives Jamie ultimatums He'll see him if he embraces Islam; he'll see him if he goes to hear Louis Farrakhan speak. \"It's like this,\" says Jamie. \"He feels that if I'm not Muslim, then I can't be his son.\" At Miz Talley's funeral, his father appeared and asked him, \"Am I in the family Are you my son Are you not my son I wanna reconcile but I'm scared.\" Jamie replied, \"You don't have to be scared. It is what it is.\" He hasn't heard from him since.\n\nJamie also has a daughter, who is 11 and whom he dotes on. Corinne is the product of a brief relationship, but Jamie is determined not to ever let her feel like he did unwanted by his real parents. She and her mother live a few blocks away; he sees her constantly; he is taking her as his date to the Oscars. \"People ask me,\" says Jamie, \"would I give up everything to have a relationship with my biological mother and father And the answer is no. Because as a parent now, I understand that it's really on you. If you want to make your relationship with your kids something great, you can do it.\" His didn't do it. \"But would I trade everything I have now for the relationship with my daughter The answer is yes.\" Miz Talley taught him that.\n\nWhen Jamie returns to Terrell, he sometimes goes back to the field where he scored his touchdowns for the Terrell Tigers, just to be by himself with the memories, and to the school where he used to serenade the girls outside the cafeteria by singing Lionel Richie songs. He sees Mr. Furlough, his high school principal, who believed in him like Miz Talley did. \"He was always special,\" says Mr. Furlough, choking up a bit, as his wife touches his hand, in the living room of their house in Terrell, where, like most houses, a bigscreen TV is ready for the Oscars. He visits Talley Talley, his brother who is really his uncle (another long story). And he sees Coach Daniels, who rolled his eyes back when Eric Bishop told him that he'd selected his stage name. \"I ain't ever calling you Jamie Foxx,\" the coach would tell him. \"Coach Daniels was the black coach on our team,\" says Jamie. \"He would pull us aside and be like, 'Listen, let me tell you something.' And it was two things 'As a young black kid, you're gonna have more of an uphill battle, and at the same time you gotta be tougher than everybody else. And there is no room for excuses. Period.' So he kept it real.\"\n\nIn late November, Gil pulls his new BMW onto a dirt road in Terrell. It is the only way to get to the graveyard where Miz Talley was laid to rest. It's a particularly bleak place, even for a cemetery, with patchy grass and broken slabs of old tombstones scattered on the ground. And then there is Miz Talley's grave. It's still new and wet, but the soil has sunk way down, the spot a large muddy crater. Someone needs to fix Miz Talley's grave.\n\nGil calls Jamie in L.A. and leaves a message \"It kind of started collapsing. There's about a teninch hole there.\" Jamie gets right back to him. \"Take care of her. Please.\"\n\nLisa Depaulo is a GQ correspondent."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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