That someone was a psychiatrist, whom Foxx started seeing midway through filming one of his lead roles. What he explored in the therapy sessions was a deep-seated dread of mental illness that was exacerbated by an incident when he was 18, when his drink was spiked by the hallucinogenic drug PCP (phencyclidine) at a college party.
Foxx had been playing piano since he was five years old, and at 18 he won a music scholarship to study at the United States International (now Alliant) University in San Diego. One night, at a party in the dorm, he was sipping a glass of whisky when he suddenly felt “terrible – the room was moving, the faces of the other people were contorted”. Someone had slipped PCP into his glass as a ‘practical joke’.
“I know who it was, but he wasn’t a friend. I was drinking whisky and it didn’t taste funny, so I had no idea. It took about 15 minutes and I knew something was wrong. I said to my roommate, ’Something is going on, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to ride it out.’”
“That was the last thing I said, and then I was almost in a coma and I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even say, ‘Take me to the hospital.’ My friend could see something was badly wrong and he took me to the emergency room.”
Another friend of his, Mark Provart, stayed at the hospital with Foxx. “Then he took me back to the dorm and I was afraid of the dark and he would talk to me every night and calm me down and say stuff like, ‘You’re OK, the demons aren’t real.’ He saved my life.”
Foxx, 55, won the best actor Oscar in 2005 for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the biopic and was nominated for best-supporting actor the same year for his role in Tom Cruise drama Collateral.
Other key films include Django Unchained, Annie, Jarhead and the Spider-Man franchise.
We will continue to pray for Jamie’s speedy recovery