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December 29, 1999
Web posted at: 1:35 p.m. EST (1835 GMT)

By Andy Culpepper
Turner Entertainment Report Senior Correspondent

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- He's got the voices. He's got the faces. He's got the impressions down pat. Jamie Foxx has got the moves -- and then some.

The WB sitcom star's talent for mimicry has been well-documented in the television series named for him. It's a gift for crafting the outrageous that he regularly unveiled for his fans in comedy sketches as a cast member of the weekly FOX variety show, "In Living Color."

But when it came time to tackle the part of a professional football player in director Oliver Stone's new film, "Any Given Sunday," Foxx didn't have to pull a pigskin out of thin air.

"See, that's the thing," the actor says during a Los Angeles interview to promote the film, a fast-paced, razzle-dazzle, MTV-meets-Grand-Opera foray into the high-stakes world of pro football.

The film, which opened last weekend as the No. 1 box-office draw, stars Al Pacino and Cameron Diaz, with a supporting cast including Jim Brown, Ann-Margret, Lauren Holly, LL Cool J, and James Woods. But the action rises and falls with the fortunes of Foxx's character, Willie Beamen.

The pressure could have been enormous but for one thing. "If it was a drama, and football didn't have anything to do with it, it might have been harder," Foxx says. "But football I know." He says this in the voice of a guy who knows his way around the gridiron.

Back home in Terrell, Texas, Foxx was known as the multitalented Eric Bishop, who just happened to be the quarterback of his high-school team. Throwing a football, he says, came naturally to him.

"My stepfather was a coach. All of my friends -- that's all we do is football. That's all we talk is football. All we do is worship NFL stars."

It's not the NFL, but a concocted professional league in which Foxx's character, Beamen, finds himself a third-string quarterback largely watching the action from a sideline bench. When the veteran star -- played by Dennis Quaid -- goes onto the injury list followed shortly by his backup, Beamen is called into action.

It's up to Beamen to prove he can fill the shoes of the team's downed leader after the rookie succumbs to the temptations of showboating: He's a rapidly rising media star, who seems to think he's got a game better than that charted by his high-profile coach, played by Pacino.

Beamen's task in securing the starting job isn't much unlike that of the man who plays him.

Although Foxx was a television standout and had made a name for himself in comedy, his big-screen credits were limited.

Not only did he need to convince the studio that he could handle a major role in a big-budget drama, he also needed to persuade them he could act and throw a football at the same time.

Foxx took the matter -- and the football -- in hand by fashioning his own screen test. "Yeah, I made a tape. They wanted to see me throw the ball."

"I told my friends ... let's do a tape of a training camp."

Foxx is clearly in his element. Recalling the moment he came up with the idea, he's the picture of animation as he describes the action. "I'm the new rookie on the team. We drive up in my Mercedes, I got the music blaring.

"I come up with a chant." And then he starts to sing.

"My name is Willie -- Willie Beamen. I keep the ladies -- screamin'." It's exactly like the sequence in the film in which Foxx's character shoots a music-video-style commercial endorsing some product. "And it made the movie," he says, grinning.

Why not? The high school quarterback-turned-stand up comic is also a trained musician who dabbled in musical performance when he wasn't taking a snap from center.

Judging from Foxx's rapping and dancing ability in the film, he could probably have a career in that arena, too, if he put his mind to it.

Then there's that matter of the body. Oliver Stone's film may actually be breaking ground for a Hollywood studio film in that there's more male nudity on display this time out than there is of the distaff set. The shower scenes and locker room footage leave little to the imagination.

Foxx is there, too, stripped all the way down to a black jock strap. He packed on 15 pounds for the role and sculpted them into a washboard-abs frame fit for one of those muscle-magazine models.

It took a trainer to convince Foxx he could look the part without going on a deprivation diet. "I asked him what I could eat. He said, 'Brother, you can eat whatever you want to. But I'm gonna run it out of you. I don't care what it is.'"

"I was 190 pounds. I was benching about 325. I was in the greatest of shape. He's still training me."

Asked how the physical transformation changed his demeanor, Foxx squares his shoulders and feigns a cocky swagger, no mean feat sitting down.

"Even my walk changed," he says. "I was like, 'Hey, man, what's up?' You know? Even my neck. I was like Mike Tyson." Suddenly he's talking like the boxer. It's a page out of "In Living Color."

To the glossies born

The thought of being a sex symbol may make some actors squirm. Foxx seems to prefer chewing it up and spitting it out.

"I was in Miami. I would take my hat off at the drop of a hat," he jokes. "'Did you say take my shirt off? I thought you said take my shirt off. Because you know, I've been working out.'"

Indeed, it seems he has. The reviews are in, and while the word on the film is mixed (critics seem either to hate it or rave), Foxx is getting generally good notices. The Boston Herald writes that he "establishes his dramatic chops in an explosive confrontational scene with Pacino" and calls it a "breakout film" for the 31-year-old.

Foxx, unlike his character Beamen for much of the film, is suitably humbled. "It wasn't about how much money you make. It wasn't about being Jamie Foxx," he says.

"It was about getting 'great job' from a person you know that has done it. It was about getting 'great job' from Al Pacino. And then, after that, who cares? Who really cares?"

Somehow, you just know Foxx does -- on any given Sunday or any other day, for that matter.

"Any Given Sunday" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company Warner Bros., a Time Warner property.