Skid Role

"After what happened when I was 18, when I was at music school, at International University in San Diego, I had a roommate named Mark, a white kid from Nebraska, he would have to talk me to sleep because I would have all of these crazy thoughts," Foxx said. "I would go down to the pianos in room FA-300 and I would just play music for hours on end just to keep my mind from the crazy stuff. . . . The parallel between me and Nathaniel was amazing. And it was scary for me."

In "The Soloist," Ayers is presented as a street scavenger whose background as a music prodigy is slowly pieced together by a newspaper journalist who is at crossroads in his own life professionally and personally. The crux of the story is the question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" And if so, on whose terms?

Wright joined Foxx in visits to UCLA, where a psychiatrist was a mental-health guide for the actor but also a source of material for shaping an authentic on-screen version of Ayers. "He told me schizophrenia is the single scariest thing that can happen to you," Foxx recounted while staring down at the palms of his hands.

"It's one thing to go crazy and not know it, but if you feel yourself slipping in," Foxx said, "then it's like drowning, going down. That's how I felt as a teenager, and just getting close to it again, I could feel the sweat coming, and I felt like I had to run out of there."

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Finding his rhythm

In his 20s, Foxx said, the voices on the edge of his mind grew quiet and he assumed that what happened to him was both fleeting and perhaps exaggerated in his memory. One night he wandered into a San Diego comedy club and there, at a friend's dare, he ended up on stage. He lighted up the place and found a circuitous path to fame. The comedy led to TV, which then led to movies and, finally, his biggest passion, music.

"I didn't want to be in comedy, I didn't plan on being in movies -- I wanted to be Lionel Ritchie," he said. "That was the goal."

Foxx is a full-on music star now with three albums that have sold close to 4.5 million copies in the U.S. alone, an impressive amount in the diminished recording industry of today. He has performed on the Grammys and, oddly, the Country Music Assn. Awards, and is about to launch a 30-date tour; on May 9 he's playing Wango Tango at Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine.