HOMBRE Exclusive: JAIME FOXX Sparkles in The Amazing Spider-Man 2

30 Apr 2014 by Francisco Romeo in Celebrities, Fame, Film, Films, Home, Profile, Stars

Academy Award winning actor, Grammy Award winning musical artist and respected comedian, Jaime Foxx is a man that can do it all, and do it well. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, opening Friday May 2,  Foxx plays Max Dillon, Spidey’s greatest fan, who eventually becomes Electro, his most challenging nemesis.

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Foxx returns to screen after his powerful performance as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s critically acclaimed Django Unchained. Most recently he lent his vocal talents as a canary named Nico to 20th Century Fox’s popular animated comedy-adventure sequel Rio 2. And next up is Columbia Pictures’ Annie, to be released on December 19, 2014.

Foxx first rose to fame in Keenan Ivory Wayans’ landmark Fox sketch comedy series, “In Living Color,” creating some of the show’s funniest and most memorable moments. He followed with his own WB Network series, “The Jamie Foxx Show,” which  he co-created, executive produced and directed several episodes during its five year run.

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After his 1999 film debut in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday, Foxx eventually had the chance to portray the legendary Ray Charles in the Taylor Hackford-directed biopic Ray. It was this film that garnered him an Academy Award for Best Actor and proved to be one of his career’s defining performances. In addition to winning the Oscar, Foxx swept the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, BAFTA, and NAACP Image Awards, as well as numerous critical awards, captivating audiences worldwide as the most accomplished actor of 2005.

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Musically speaking Foxx’s album “Unpredictable” topped the charts, as it held the number one spot for five weeks and sold over one million units in 20 days. Foxx was nominated for eight Billboard Music Awards, three Grammy Awards, one Soul Train Music Award, and two American Music Awards, where Foxx won Favorite Male Artist. In January 2010, Foxx and T-Pain’s record breaking #1 song “Blame It” off “Intuition,” won Best R&B Performance by a Duo/Group with Vocals at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards.

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Additional film credits include Dream Girls, Collateral, Ali, and Miami Vice among a long list of credits.

Foxx also has a partnership with SIRIUS Satellite Radio on his own 24/7 radio station called Foxxhole. The station is a combination of celebrity interviews, comedy, and music.

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HOMBRE: What can you tell us about your character, Max Dillon?
Jaime Foxx: Max is a very, very smart guy, a guy who should be celebrated for building big things for Oscorp. Max should be getting a company car and an expense account – and instead, he gets nothing. He resents it, but he doesn’t know how to react. He’s ready to lash out, but he doesn’t know how.

H: What is his relationship with Spider-Man?
JF: Spider-Man was the one person who did seem to notice Max, who said his name. As Max, he feels that Spider-Man was his friend. Actually, because of that, he becomes obsessed – pictures on his wall, that kind of thing. He takes it very seriously. But later, after Max gets his powers and comes to Times Square, Spider-Man tries to stop Max from hurting himself and innocent New Yorkers. Max feels betrayed by his hero. He tragically misinterprets what Spider-Man is trying to do. He sees Spider-Man getting all the glory, at his expense – even though it’s not what Spider-Man intended. But it doesn’t matter – to Max, that’s a betrayal.

H: In the comic books Electro was never huge, but you transformed him into a worthy adversary, how did that happen?
JF: In doing movies like this you have to respect the fans and also remember that you are going to be introducing this to people who may not follow comic books. You have to push the needle forward with these movies. You have to take those chances.

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H: How was it suiting up as Electro?
JF: Imagine blue candle wax and just dip me in the candle wax for 4 hours, and then add the silicone, and then the CGI guys come in.

H: What do Electro and the Green Goblin have in common?
JF: What’s great about the Spider-Man franchise is that these guys don’t start out as villains. If you think about it, we’ve only been villians for that (snaps his fingers) long. We just came into whatever this is so we don’t really quite know. Hopefully if they do number 3 or 4 or 5 we will eventually own that anger and own that villain.

H: What can you tell us about the evolution of your character?
JF: You see the tale of three people that all start off the same. All three of those guys, Peter Parker, Harry and Max have somethings wrong with them. Now they’ve been blessed with incredible talents and incredible powers and not everybody responds to talent and power the same way. We look at it every day. There are some people that are going to rise to the top of politics or a huge organization, or even when you look at the guy with the Clippers. It’s like they all start out the same way, and I’m paraphrasing, but check the measure of a man once you give him power, Abe Lincoln said. Because we are all designed differently, we’ll respond differently. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re all responding different to these superpowers we’ve been given and everybody can’t be the same . You can’t have absolute sunshine without having absolute darkness.

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H: Why do audiences love Spider-Man?
JF: It’s crazy, my four year old daughter since she was three she’s learned how to spell Spider-Man. You put her in a Spider-Man costume and you say to her ‘You’re Spidergirl,’ and she says, ‘I’m SpiderMAN!’ She’s four years old and she’s in her Spider-Man bouncy for her birthday and I get the call that I’m going to be in Spider-Man and I tell her. Her eyes lit up and she says ‘What are you going to be’ and I say, ‘I’m going to be a bad guy, Electro’ and she says, ‘You know Spider-Man is going to kick your butt!’ It’s Coca Cola, it’s Nike with all these franchises, you have to go check them out.

H: Why did you decided to enter the world of superheroes now?
JF: All the times they asked before it was the wrong time. But it was Quentin Tarrantino and Django that allowed me to be international. Now when I go to Rome or Germany or any of those places, people are so into Django. It made sense – it’s in the same Sony family – to now become part of Spider-Man. It was the right time.

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H: Your character Max is such an outsider, what did you draw on for the character?
JF: Well there’s a guy that I grew up with. I was about eight years old and I would watch him. It was definitely him. That Max character in the comic books. His wife left him, his father left; so I was going to bring that to life and at the same time have a comical take on it. Like when we first meet him in the first scene when Spider-Man helps him lick his hair. I remember being in the street in New York and black girls walking by thinking, ‘O my God! Jaime Foxx, what is wrong with you? What is going on since Django?’ (Laughs).

H: What does it mean to play this character?
JF: For me, when you get a character like this is great. I call it sometimes you get the fame and you don’t see the person. I do this joke in my act all the time, it’s called ‘This motherf*****’ and that’s when you see a person, but you see them too much.. so when I walk into a place and people say ‘…this motherf*****.’ He’s everywhere. So if you get a chance to disappear like in Max, it works, and in electro you disappear.
There’s always two things I consider; how can I nail the character, and at the same time, how can I disappear.

H: How did you prepare?
JF: I always come with this much stuff, I come with a bible and eventually none of it is in there. But you always come prepared.

H: After so many career defining roles, what’s next?
JF: I have a wish list. I want to do the Mike Tyson story He’s a friend and when I talk to Mike I say, ‘Mike, how you feeling?,’ he responds (in a dead on Mike Tyson voice), ‘I’m great, all praise to Allah my brother.’ I say why are you so great? ‘Cause I don’t have any money anymore, nobody wants anything from me. When I had money everyone wanted something. I’m happy.’ So he would tell me all this great stories and then he would tell me the heartbreak of every great story. I think that would be great project. And when it comes to superheroes I’ve always liked Spawn. Always thought that it would be complex. Dane (DeHaan) is lucky, because everything is open to him. When you’ve been in it for like twenty five years you have to pick right, you can’t go backwards and you can’t do the same.

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THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY

Francisco Romeo

A Citizen of the World... A Dream Maker... An Adventure Seeker... A Lover of Life. And Finally ...the Editorial Director & Publisher of HOMBRE, the World's Leading Publication for Latin Men. www.hombre1.com

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