Jamie Foxx Explains Health Mystery: I Was Gone for 20 Days

Jamie Foxx has offered the first extended insight into a mystery health condition which hospitalized him for weeks last year.

The actor was caught by an X user explaining some of what had happened to him–although he stopped short of saying what the condition was.

Foxx, 56, spent time in an Atlanta hospital after suffering a health episode on April 11 last year. He was then treated at a physical rehabilitation center in Chicago, according to TMZ, but has since appeared to make a full recovery.

The actor and comedian has given only brief updates on his condition and until now, did not discuss how he came to be hospitalized. Speaking to a group of people outside a restaurant on a sidewalk which the poster, @artofdialogue, said was in downtown Phoenix, Foxx said it started with a “bad headache.”

“Look, April 11 last year, bad headache, asked my boy for an Advil,” he told the people, adding, “I was gone 20 days. Don’t remember anything.”

“I’m in Atlanta, they told me. My sister, my daughter took me to the first doctor. Next doctor said, ‘There’s something going on up there.’” He added, “I won’t say it on camera. I won’t say it on camera.”

The first word from Foxx’s family was from daughter Corrine, 30, who said on social media last April that her father was ill.

“We wanted to share that, my father, Jamie Foxx, experienced a medical complication yesterday,” the statement, on April 23, said. “Luckily, due to quick action and great care, he is already on his way to recovery.”

TMZ later reported that Foxx was in a specialist facility in Chicago, and by July he was spotted in the city playing pickleball. In August he used his own Instagram account to say, “finally startin to feel like myself… it’s been an unexpected dark journey… but I can see the light.”

But he never said what had actually caused the long-term hospitalization and rehab treatment, leading to speculation about the cause. The Phoenix video showed that he remains reluctant to have it more widely known.

Since recovering, Foxx has repeatedly expressed gratitude for his return to health, including saying that without his sister Deirdra, he might not be alive. And in December, he made his first red carpet appearance, to receive a Vanguard Award at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Cinema & Television: Honoring Black, Latino & AAPI Achievements. He told the audience: “I’ve been through something. I’ve been through some things. It’s crazy, I couldn’t do that six months ago. I couldn’t actually walk too.”

He was also accused in November of groping two women on a New York rooftop in 2015, but has denied wrongdoing.

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