Speaking to Howard Stern on his Sirius XM radio show, Foxx revealed that after the 2004 film Ray was released, he was drinking a lot, and as a result, he was “f*cking up.” He then got a call from Oprah, telling him “All of this gallivanting and all this kind of shit, that’s not what you want to do. I want to take you somewhere, make you understand the significance of what you’re doing.”
According to Foxx, he goes to a meeting arranged by Oprah at Quincy Jones’ house. He sees a group of black actors from the ‘60s and ‘70s, just waiting for him to tell him how badly he was messing up his acting career and what he should do to stop it.
The impromptu intervention was done to tell Jamie Foxx to get his life together and start acting right. “I want to give you responsibility,” Sidney Poitier told Foxx. “When I saw your performance [in Ray], it made me grow two inches.”
Jamie then broke down in tears and told Stern that it is the most “significant time” in his life.
