Toronto Flashback: Jamie Foxx Hit a Excessive Observe at TIFF With ‘Ray’

Jamie Foxx’s go to to Toronto in 2004 set him on an awards trajectory that resulted in his successful the perfect actor Oscar 5 months later for Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s biopic of the rhythm and blues legend Ray Charles. As Roger Ebert presciently famous in a pageant dispatch: “Jamie Foxx is one other actor who will emerge … trailing clouds of glory. He gained a standing ovation for his virtuoso efficiency.”

Foxx, who met with Charles earlier than the movie went into manufacturing, mentioned the musician gave his blessing to a warts-and-all portrayal. “He mentioned, ‘Look, man, inform the story. Should you don’t inform the story, it’s not going to be fascinating,’ ” Foxx defined to JazzTimes journal in the course of the fest. “No one needs to see a film that’s, like, ‘Ooh, Ray, you had been so good all of your life since you had been blind.’ You wish to see the intense choices he needed to make with a view to preserve his life going. He had a profession that lasted over 50 years. There have been sure issues he needed to do. However he was nonetheless a person, and was fractured in some sense with the medicine and the ladies.” (Charles died in June 2004, three months earlier than the movie’s Toronto premiere.)

Foxx additionally took time to benefit from the TIFF get together scene. When Kevin Spacey, coming from a screening of his Bobby Darin film Past the Sea, confirmed up at a late-night celebration for Ray, “Spacey … grabbed the mike and began singing the Darin standby ‘Splish Splash,’ accompanied by Foxx, an achieved pianist,” reported sfgate.com. “Earlier than it was over, each Spacey and Foxx had jumped up on the piano, the place they belted out the remainder of the track collectively.”

At this yr’s fest, Foxx will possible strike a special word in Maggie Betts’ courtroom drama, The Burial, from Amazon. He performs a flamboyant personal-injury lawyer who takes on the case of a funeral house proprietor (Tommy Lee Jones) preventing a company takeover of his household enterprise.