The Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx has opened up about the medical emergency which struck him in April 2023, and which he had kept private until now.
Speaking on Netflix comedy special Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was ..., the star, 56, became emotional as he discussed how his sister was told they could “lose him”, and how the experience led to him rediscovering his faith.
Foxx was shooting the forthcoming comedy Back in Action opposite Cameron Diaz, when he started experiencing a “bad headache”. His friends took him to see a doctor in Atlanta who gave him a cortisone shot and then “sent me home”, but his sister, Deidra Dixon, “knew something was wrong”.
Foxx took issue with the medical care he received, saying: “What the fuck is that? I don’t know if you can do Yelps for doctors, but that’s half a star.”
But he had more praise for the staff at the hospital where his sister then took him – and which was moments from the theatre in which he shot the special.
“She had a hunch that some angels [were] in there,” said Foxx. “Ya’ll saved my life just 400 yards away from here in Piedmont hospital. They put me back together again.”
By this time, Foxx had collapsed, but his sister was told the “horrible news” that her brother was “having a brain bleed that has led to a stroke … and that if they didn’t operate on him as soon as possible he would die.
“If I don’t go in his head right now, we’re going to lose him,” Foxx recalled his sister being told, adding that she “knelt down outside the operating room and prayed the whole time.”
Of being unconscious, Foxx said: “Your life doesn’t flash before your face. It was kind of oddly peaceful. I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light. I was in that tunnel, though. It was hot in that tunnel.
“Shit, am I going to the wrong place in this motherfucker? Because I looked at the end of the tunnel, and I thought I saw the devil like, ‘Come on.’ Or is that Puffy [Sean Combs]? I’m fucking around.”
Until the special, Foxx has kept the details of his condition private, leading to considerable speculation in the press and among his fans, some of whose theories kicked off the show.
Foxx explained that he woke in May, and found himself in a wheelchair but with no idea why. Doctors said he might make a full recovery, but that it was likely to be the “worst year of his life”.
He attempted to recalibrate his new circumstances, he says, joking about trying to keep his “pickle” private from his female nurse before finding out she had already been bathing him for a month and a half.
He also thanked numerous physiotherapists and a psychiatrist, who led him to the conclusion that reaffirming his Christian faith was key to his recovery – as was retaining his sense of humour. “If I can stay funny, I can stay alive” became his mantra.
• Back in Action is released on 17 January and What Happened Was … is now on Netflix.
