Jamie Foxx Reveals His Life-or-Death Stroke Battle: ‘I Went Out, I Don’t Remember 20 Days’

It was almost the end for Jamie Foxx. In 2023, the 56-year-old was filming Back in Action with Glenn Close and Cameron Diaz (making her long-awaited movie comeback). “April 11, I was having a bad headache and I asked my boy for an aspirin,” the actor recalls in his new Netflix special, What Had Happened Was… “I realized quickly that when you’re in a medical emergency, your boys don’t know what the f**k to do.” Before he could take the pill, he says, snapping his fingers, “I went out. I don’t remember 20 days.”

Initially, his friends took him to a hospital where he was administered a cortisone shot and sent home. “What the f**k is that?” he jokes in the special. “I don’t know if you can do Yelps for doctors, but that’s half a star.” His sister, Deidra Dixon, was still worried about his health and rushed him to Atlanta’s Piedmont Hospital. There she received the agonizing news that her brother had a brain bleed that had led to a stroke. He would die if he didn’t have surgery immediately. Throughout the ordeal, the Oscar winner reveals he was “oddly peaceful,” though he states that he was not ready to die. “I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light,” he jokes, adding, “It was hot in that tunnel. S**t, am I going to the wrong place in this motherf**ker?”

Instead, he says, he woke up May 4 in a wheelchair with no idea what had occurred. Months of grueling therapy followed, with the actor keeping mum on what had happened to him. As rumors flew — that he was paralyzed or blind — he eventually shared some updates on social media. But in the special, recorded in Atlanta in October, he admits even doctors don’t know what went wrong. “It’s a mystery,” he informs the crowd. “All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer, because I needed every prayer.”