Jamie Foxx

Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), professionally known as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer-songwriter, stand-up comedian, and talk radio host. As an actor, his work in the film Ray earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical/comedy. He is also a Grammy Award winning musician, producing two albums which have charted highly on the Billboard 200: Unpredictable, which topped the chart, and Intuition.

Foxx was abandoned seven months after birth, and was subsequently adopted and raised in Terrell by his mother's adoptive parents, Estelle and Mark Talley. Foxx had a strict Baptist upbringing and began piano lessons at the age of five by his grandmother's orders. He has often acknowledged his grandmother's influence in his life as one of the greatest reasons for his success. When he found that female comedians were often called first to perform, he changed his name to Jamie Foxx, feeling that it was an ambiguous enough name to disallow any biases. He chose his surname as a tribute to comedian Redd Foxx.