Jamie Foxx learns to show up

Jamie Foxx once had a plan for the days he had missed: Disneyland. Coming home from work, he would offer an outing and a good time. “Let Mickey Mouse handle it,” he said, recalling that approach. He had thought the excitement could help him raise Corinne.²

When Corinne asked about therapy, Foxx initially rejected the idea. He eventually joined her for a session, but kept talking until the therapist interrupted him so Corinne could speak. As Foxx recalled it, she told him what she had wanted during his absences: “I just wanted that time.”²

In November 2023, a woman filed a civil lawsuit alleging that Foxx sexually assaulted her in 2015. Foxx denied the allegation.⁹

His part of the work

Foxx put the change in terms of his own habits. He had been late. He had missed time. Balancing the entertainer who liked a party with the dad his daughter needed had been difficult. “I had to put discipline on myself,” he said.³

He had worried about leaving Corinne for work while she was still little. When she was four, he told a director he was hesitant to take a film because he did not want to be away from her. The director suggested bringing her along so she could see what he did. Foxx later passed that advice on to other fathers trying to balance work and children.²³

He wanted his daughters to know they could come to him even when he was tired. That also meant hearing their complaints about him. He knew people in his own family had grown up with parents who did not show up, and he wanted his daughters to have a different experience.⁶

Corinne has spoken about perfectionism and the pressure she felt growing up in a famous family. She had been in therapy since fourteen, learning to allow herself mistakes and value people who listened. She had more to tell her father than whether she enjoyed an outing.¹⁹

Even when her father did not understand what she was going through as a teenage girl, Corinne said, he wanted to. She valued that effort.⁴

Foxx could not assume the same grand entrance would delight both girls. He recalled arriving at Corinne's high school in a Rolls-Royce; she refused to get in and called her mother. His younger daughter, Anelise, around four, chose that car for an outing and settled into her baby seat. Same dad, same car, two very different receptions.²

When Corinne became a high-school cheerleader, Foxx's cheering section wore T-shirts bearing her picture. He called this “good embarrassing.”²⁴

A Sunday with Dad

Asked about a typical Sunday in 2017, Foxx described getting up with the children and going out for breakfast. There was football to watch and basketball to play; he sometimes set them a target of making a hundred shots. Faith was part of the day, too: his daughter had learned the books of the Bible, and other children in the family were learning them. “Sundays are really fun,” he said.²¹

A hand held out for the music

At dinner with her father, Anelise was listening through earbuds while her parents talked about her music. Foxx reached out his hand and asked her to tap the rhythm she was hearing. He wanted to show her mother, Kristin, how Anelise could pick out the beat. As her finger moved across his hand, his face widened into a smile.²⁰

He was proud of her piano and guitar playing. He also had a dad's precise recall of the points, rebounds and blocks from a basketball game. Asked about family, he described the feeling of seeing a child “happy to see you coming.” It was the welcome he hoped to earn.⁵

His musical success gave Anelise something to aim at, and someone to compete with. He recalled her plans to win a Grammy and beat him as well as her cousins. He was the dad reporting his daughter's ambitions, including the part where she intended to surpass him.⁶

In a family quiz with Corinne, he was less certain about her favorite meal. He remembered the gluten-free part, guessed salmon, then steak and potatoes. She gave him half a point and supplied the answer: pizza.¹

Anelise wanted room to be quieter than her dad. Foxx recalled trying to get her excited about a holiday television performance. She told him she was happy and asked him to calm down, explaining that she was the nonchalant one. She also preferred keeping her hair in front of her face. He let her make that choice. “So I protect that for her,” he said.²³

Taking her direction

Working with Corinne gave Foxx another reason to listen: on their sitcom, his daughter was also his boss. She was a writer and executive producer on the Netflix comedy Dad Stop Embarrassing Me! Her father was its star. Between takes, he played music and danced; sometimes she had to get him back to work. Other producers found their requests landed better through her. She said he listened to her as his boss.⁴

Foxx gave his own example of Corinne's authority on their sitcom. He was onstage trying out a joke he thought was funny when she called down to tell him it wasn't. He recalled being taken aback, then accepting her direction. He wanted people to understand that “she's really running it.” Her producer credit came with the right to tell her father when something needed to change.²²

The arrangement asked him to take an adult daughter's authority seriously. Corinne was learning to speak up in rooms with Netflix executives who had known her as a little girl. He could enjoy being her father and still be the actor who stopped when the producer asked.⁴

Working together did not mean that Foxx followed Corinne onto every set. In 2020, she said he had never visited the sets of her films. She thought he was giving her space to work without his large personality filling the room.⁸

On Beat Shazam, Corinne was still trying to keep up with her father's energy. In 2024, she described him tap dancing on set while she needed another coffee. She said they could poke fun at each other.¹⁰

His advice to her could be quieter. Corinne says he has always told her, “Save a little love for yourself.” She connects those words to keeping a core of self-respect when the industry or a relationship is hard, and staying with the creative work she wants to do.⁴

Asked what he hoped for his children's futures, Foxx wanted “their own thing, their own identity.” His name and experience were already there. He wanted them to develop lives that could belong to them.²⁰

The father who could receive help

After Foxx was hospitalized in April 2023, the family faced a different situation. He later said a brain bleed had led to a stroke. In May, Corinne challenged public speculation, saying he had been out of the hospital for weeks and was recuperating.^{11, 14}

In his December 2024 Netflix special, he recalled not wanting Anelise, then fourteen, to see him in that condition. She came into his room with her guitar anyway. The special ended with her joining him onstage and saying she had always dreamed they would perform together. They finished with a song about his ordeal.¹⁴

Corinne later described the strain: going into caretaking mode while online rumors grew, and not feeling it was her place to release his medical information. At the 2025 BET Awards, Foxx thanked her and his sister, Deidre Dixon, for stepping up.^{12, 13, 16, 15}

Corinne's fiancé, Joe Hooten, arranged an engagement celebration in her father's rehabilitation room so Foxx could be part of it.⁷

As Corinne planned the wedding, her father had ideas of his own. She asked for his guest list and received three hundred names. He also suggested LED screens showing her face. She was unsure about the screens but willing to trust his vision. What she hoped most was that he could get through their walk down the aisle and their dance before the tears came.¹⁷

He walked Corinne down the aisle when she married Joe Hooten in September 2024. She said the walk meant especially much after his health crisis. A strings arrangement of Georgia on My Mind connected the moment to Ray, his Oscar-winning film. As a child, she had accompanied him to the ceremony. Now he was accompanying her.⁷

In wedding highlights she shared a year later, he swaps dress shoes for white sneakers and breaks into a move of his own. There was still room for the exuberant dad.¹⁸

In 2021, Foxx had described what he wanted his daughters to know: they could “beat on my chest and tell me anything.” Being available meant hearing their complaints, too.⁶