Oscar-winning actor and musician Jamie Foxx has opened up about how Oprah Winfrey reached out to him after noticing he had a worrying penchant for partying and drinking.
Speaking to Howard Stern on SiriusXM Radio, Foxx admitted to a burgeoning alcohol problem following his starring role in biographical film Ray in 2005 - and how Winfrey and other African-Americans in the entertainment industry inspired him not to go further down that route.
"You know me - I was going hard. I'm not playing," he said.
"I'm having a good time, and I'm not knowing I'm f**king up. I mean I'm drinking, I'm doing every f**king thing you can possibly imagine.
"And then I get a call saying, 'Hi Jamie Foxx, this is Oprah. You're blowing it, Jamie Foxx. All this gallivanting, all of this kind of sh*t, that's not what you want to do.'"
Foxx said Winfrey then invited him to attend music producer Quincy Jones's house, in an attempt to show him "the significance of what you're doing" - but what he walked into the home, he realised he had walked into an intervention-like experience.
"We go into the house and there's all these old black actors - actors from the '60s and the '70s, who just wanted to say 'good luck, don't blow it'," he said.
Winfrey pointed across the room at iconic African-American actor and film director Sidney Poitier, who later sat him down and talked him through where he was going wrong.
"He says, 'I want to give you one thing - I want to give you responsibility. When I saw you perform, I grew two inches,'" Foxx explained.
"So I break down, everybody sits me down - it was actually Sidney Poitier's birthday.
"They made me understand the significance of it. They said 'Sidney did it' and it was a character we can all embrace."
Newshub.
