All celebrities have a rumor that dogs them: This one has a secret addiction; that one has a secret love child. The rumor I hear about Jamie Foxx, who this month stars alongside bad boy Colin Farrell in the screen version of the flashy eighties cop drama Miami Vice, isn’t the most salacious, but it’s definitely amusing. According to my source, not too long ago, Foxx, who lives in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley and is known for hosting the best parties in town, had a visit from the police after his neighbors complained that there was a wild game of basketball being played on Foxx’s property, and they wanted it stopped. The problem wasn’t the volume of the game, or that an errant basketball had flown into their yard. It’s that the ballers were playing without any clothes on.
“Are you sure?” I ask my source, envisioning six nude brothers fumbling for a ball.
“Naked basketball,” my source says emphatically. “I’m telling you the man’s crazy!”
According to Foxx, most of the players were actually female, and he wasn’t even home at the time. Still, the word crazy comes up a lot when folks talk about the actor. Someone utters it at a photo shoot after he breaks into a funny bit about his daughter teaching him dance moves she picked up on the Disney Channel. Another person says it the next day on the set of TRL where Jamie is bouncing frenetically across the stage.
Of course, in the rarified world of ubertalent that Foxx now calls home, the word crazy is often bandied about. Usually it connotes something along the lines of ridiculously egomaniacal. But with Foxx, crazy has a different meaning. It means he’s good for a superfun time.
By all accounts, Foxx has a certain charisma that seems to pull people, or at the very least women, to the edge of reason. (There’s this story Foxx once told Playboy about a shapely beauty who showed up at one of his parties and spent the evening wearing only high heels and a pager clipped to the toe of her shoe.) Without a doubt, working in his favor is the allure of Fame, Success and Money. And then he’s got those boyish freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose and large manly-man arms. Nicer to look at than most comedians, and more approachable than many actors, Foxx exudes a kind of affable sex appeal. Yet to see him up close and personal, to hear him speak in a voice that often hovers barely above a whisper, it’s clear he’s the kind of man who could look you in the eye and have you so dazzled you’d barely notice your dress dropping to the floor.