Ray, the movie with Jamie Foxx, is the never-before-told, musical biographical drama of American legend Ray Charles. Foxx had known little about Ray Charles beyond his music before being cast in the role, and found himself on his own personal journey into the man's fascinating and embattled background. "When I read the script I realized that this was a really phenomenal story, not just about music, but abut a man who overcame all kinds of difficulties to become a real leader of the culture. In Ray, the movie with Jamie Foxx, Foxx remarks on Ray Charles: "The way he intertwined everything he experienced in his life to make this amazing music, it was really something special." Foxx threw himself headlong into the role. After meeting with Charles, Foxx began by adapting many of the singer's physical trademarks, from his close-cropped hair to his bodily mannerisms, born out of a combination of Charles' history, blindness and unstoppable inner sense of music. In fact, for Ray, the movie with Jamie Foxx, the actor immersed himself in Soul, Jazz and Blues recordings to set the mood; attended classes at the Braille Institute; and spent weeks during rehearsal and production walking around with his eyes sealed tight for 12 hours a day, to gain an intimate understanding of what it really means be blind. "It was interesting to me that not being able to see made me angry at first," comments Foxx. "It's frustrating. But I also noticed my sense of hearing becoming more acute, and I became sensitive to all kinds of sounds nobody else was even hearing." Many on the set where stunned by how spontaneous and natural the actor's embodiment of Charles became. But imitation was never the point for Foxx. "The key word for me was nuance, because I didn't want to simply impersonate him," says Foxx. "Rather, I wanted to capture some part of his spirit, that's all. There were a lot of little touches which I tried to layer-his musicality, his warmth, his sense of balance, his posture-until the physical side of things all fell into place."

Throughout the entire process of making Ray, the movie with Jamie Foxx, Ray Charles was more than cooperative, insisting at every turn that the filmmakers never shy away from the darker parts of his reality. "Ray actually said, 'You can tell any story you want and you can make me look any way you want, but I will not let you not tell the truth, because that wouldn't be right,'" explains Hackford. This type of reality makes Ray, the movie with Jamie Foxx more captivating.

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