Actor Jamie Foxx credited God and the power of prayer for saving his life after he was hospitalized last year due to a brain bleed and stroke that left him unable to remember a 20-day period from April to May 2023.
In his recent Netflix special, “Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was…” released on Dec. 10, the 56-year-old actor revealed for the first time that he suffered “a brain bleed that led to a stroke.”
Foxx said he wouldn’t have survived the ordeal without his family, including his daughters, Corinne Foxx and Anelise Bishop, and his sister, Deidra Dixon.
“It is a mystery,” he said. “We still don’t know exactly what happened to me. All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer because I needed every prayer.”
He said that on April 11, 2023, he began experiencing a bad headache and asked a friend for an aspirin. At the time, he was working on the film “Back in Action” alongside Glenn Close and Cameron Diaz.
“Before I could get the aspirin, I went out,” he said. “I don’t remember 20 days.”
Foxx thanked his sister, who he said was “4-foot-11 of nothing but pure love,” for driving him around Atlanta to find a hospital.
“What’s interesting was as she drove around, she didn’t know anything about Piedmont Hospital, but she had a hunch that some angels were sending her,” Foxx said. “Because she said that’s what we’re going to need.”
A “cool doctor” in a Los Angeles Lakers jersey told Foxx’s sister that he was “having a brain bleed that has led to a stroke, and if I don’t go into his head right now, we’re going to lose him.”
“And (Dixon) fired back and said, ‘You can go in his head, but you’re not going to find anything, because I already talked to God.'”
The actor revealed that outside the operating room, his sister and daughters “held it down.” His sister, he said, prayed on her knees the entire time, while Corinne refused to let anyone else visit Foxx since she did not want anyone to see him hospitalized.
“Your life doesn’t flash before your face,” he said. “It’s kind of oddly peaceful. I say this all the time: I saw the tunnel; I didn’t see the light.”
He revealed doctors gave him “every medication,” but it was not “working.”
While he was in a coma, his daughter Anelise started a routine of strumming the guitar for him. Foxx said his vitals miraculously began to improve.
“My vitals are so bad, they’re going to lose me. That’s when a miracle happened, and that miracle was working through my youngest daughter. She’s 14 — I didn’t want her to see me like that, but she snuck into my hospital room with my guitar. ‘I know what my daddy needs,'” Foxx explained.
“When she was playing, my vitals … went down. … It was God in that guitar. Spiritual defibrillator.”
Foxx’s first update following his medical scare came in July 2023, when he spoke about his hospitalization in an emotional Instagram video.
“I cannot even begin to tell you how far it took me and how it brought me back,” he said in the video. “I went through something that I thought I would never ever go through. I know a lot of people were waiting or wanting to hear updates. But to be honest with you, I just didn’t want you to see me like that.”
He shared another update on Instagram a month later.
“You’re looking at a man who is thankful … finally starting to feel like myself. … it’s been an unexpected dark journey… but I can see the light,” he wrote.
Foxx reflected on being in rehab in Chicago. When he woke up in early May, he was in a wheelchair and initially unable to walk.
“I appreciate every well wish, Atlanta. To the world, I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “Even when I see people on the street and they roll the window down and yell out, ‘Man, we’re glad you’re here,’ as I look out and I see my family and I see my friends, I can’t tell you how good it feels. … It feels amazing.”
In a 2019 interview with The Christian Post, Foxx discussed his faith. He said growing up in Texas, he attended church on Sundays and several other days of the week, saying it just a way of life. Every Sunday, he played the piano in church, assisting the congregation in worship.
“I grew up in church. I mean, church, every single day. Church, church, church, church,” the Oscar-winning actor said.
Foxx revealed that his grandmother, a devout woman who insisted her grandson memorize the Bible, was the one who taught him to be kind to others and extend compassion, even to those he disagreed with.
“My grandmother, who raised our city, made sure I understood the books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, etc.,” he said. “[And] she explained [to me] the umbrella of Christianity.”
He shared how, one Sunday, the pastor preached from the pulpit that those with same-sex attraction are not to be loved “because God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” Foxx recalled. At that moment, his grandmother stood up and replied, “You stop that. God made sissies too.”
“I never understood what that meant,” Foxx said. “As I got older, I asked my grandma what she meant. She said, ‘I run a nursery school. There are little boys that will play with army men, while other little boys would play with dolls. But I had to nurture them and pray for them, and let them know that I’m opening the umbrella of Christianity, which meant that everyone here on the planet, if your religion is really real, should be able to stand under that umbrella. However, we will be holier than thou on Sunday and then on Monday, go back to holding that umbrella only for us to stand under.'”
Foxx said he hopes that one day, the mentality of “umbrella Christianity” will apply to all races, where people of every tribe, tongue, and nation worship together under the same roof.
“I’ve always had this vision, and I’ve done it in certain things where I have people come to my house and we have church at my house, not shown on television or anything like that. But my idea is that at a certain point, black church, white church, Hispanic, everybody goes to church together,” he told CP.
“I think when that very religion, which is supposed to take us to a beautiful place, becomes a tool to divide, that’s where you leave people sort of [disillusioned],” he said.