Acting, or pretending, can no doubt be very difficult. You have to walk around a wood somewhere in a leather caplet carrying a prop bow & arrow and somehow get people to believe that you're Robin Hood, not Gladiator in leather pants—that's a challenge. But listening to actors talk about how difficult acting is, the dark places that were oh-so-dark that they had to go to and somehow extract themselves from in time for lunch, etc? That's the most difficult challenge of all.
From MTV News:
Oscar-winning actor, singer, comedian and radio-show host Jamie Foxx found it hard to disconnect from his role as a homeless schizophrenic in the new movie "The Soloist." The part was so emotionally taxing that Foxx started therapy to help him cope with the role and keep himself separate from the character.
"It was something that I enjoyed, but it shredded me. I went to places that I never thought I would ever go," he said, according to Bossip. "I just remember being in my bathroom broke down, talking to my manager, like, 'I don't know if I'll be able to finish this.' "
For the movie, in which he co-stars with Robert Downey Jr., Foxx found that even when he wasn't on set, he was still consumed by the role of Nathanial Ayers, a Juilliard-trained musician who suffers from schizophrenia and wound up living on the streets of Los Angeles. "You had to lose your mind every day you're on set, and sometimes you didn't have enough time to get your mind back before the weekend."
First off, congratulations on winning an Oscar for Sirius radio show hosting, Jamie. Looks like that whole Miley-Cyrus thing paid off: the title of "Radio host" has been successfully added to your increasingly unwieldy and ridiculous hyphenate. Four job titles, however is the limit. Try and add "vodka manufacturer" or "panda bear costume-owner" to your hyphenate, and the ritual shedding of the titles will begin until you're left with just "Autotune-user Jamie Foxx."
But back to the playing-a-schizophrenic-made-me-lose-my-mind/weekend news. So, for Jamie Foxx, apparently the "places that I never thought I would go" are: 1. Crying in the bathroom while talking to his manager (aka, Tuesday) and 2. Staying home on a weekend. Not included in this list: the red nightmare autotune club, Sirius radio studios, and in the car with Ron Howard, Forrest Whitaker, and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Pretending to have mental illness is emotionally taxing, but pretending that pretending to have mental illness really made you crazy requires a lot of skill. Foxx hasn't quite mastered it yet, but in a few years he'll be Oscar winning interview-giver Jamie Foxx. Next time, he should just hold up a picture of this:
Next to a picture of this:
And shout, "It's called 'range!'"