10 Things You Didn't Know About Jamie Foxx

2. He Was Almost In Jerry Maguire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msw6uwsvrfs Jamie Foxx's first major film role was in Any Given Sunday in 1999, but he auditioned for a few notable things before that. In particular, he actually auditioned for the Tom Cruise film Jerry Maguire, trying out for the character of Rod Tidwell. That role would end up going to Cuba Gooding Jr. In an interview on The Graham Norton show he talked about this experience, saying that he was super loud in his audition and that over time he had to learn to tone it down. He also talks about the fact that in the audition, Tom Cruise read his lines really quietly, and so Foxx actually got confused thinking Tom had lost his place in the script. "I was reading all loud and stuff, and Tom was very quiet," he once told Playboy. "So I read my lines, and then he paused for a long time... So I said, 'Tom, it's your line.' And he looked at me and said, 'I know. I got it.'" He also said that he was nervous auditioning for such a famous actor. "Maybe I wasn't ready," he said. "Tom was just too famous, and I was too young. I was a stand-up comedian, and I just f**ked it up. Cuba Gooding Jr. ended up getting that part, and he won the best supporting actor Oscar for the role in 1997. But Jamie Foxx would later go on to work with Tom Cruise in Collateral, which earned Foxx his second Oscar nomination. And although his Jerry Maguire audition didn't go well, Foxx said that something good did come from it. "The one good thing about meeting Tom was that I told great jokes that day when we had downtime," he said. "I had everybody laughing and stuff, and he remembered me."