Oprah Winfrey has played down her role as Jamie Foxx’s savior after the Oscar winner revealed she staged an intervention to tame his wild ways.
The Ray star recently told shock jock Howard Stern he was losing his way in 2004 at the height of his career, thanks to his hard partying antics, and it was Oprah who took him to one side and urged him to calm down.
Foxx told Stern that Oprah called him and told the actor and singer he was “blowing it”.
He recalls, “(She said), ‘All of this gallivanting and all this kind of s**t, that’s not what you want to do… I want to take you somewhere, make you understand the significance of what you’re doing.'”
Winfrey then organized a meeting for Foxx at musician Quincy Jones’ home, and invited several legendary African-American celebrities to help her help him.
But Oprah isn’t sure she saved Foxx’s life – she was just trying to help him get back on track.
“This whole fame trip is a trip… When I first started, there were people that helped me… I wanted to do the same for him,” she tells Extra. “We went over to Quincy Jones’ house and I knew Sidney Poitier was going to be there, and I thought it would be important for him as an actor to have some one-on-one time with the actor Sidney Poitier. I think that was helpful. I thought that was grounding for him… That’s what friends do.”
Jamie admitted to Stern that the celebrity intervention brought him to his knees and forced him to take a good look at his life.
“We go in the house and there are all these old actors, black actors from the ’60s and the ’70s, who look like they just want to say, ‘Good luck… Don’t blow it’.”
And a profound comment screen legend Poitier made will stay with him forever.
“(He said), ‘I want to give you responsibility… When I saw your performance, it made me grow two inches’,” Foxx recalled.
“To this day, it’s the most significant time in my life where it was, like, a chance to grow up.”
