Jamie Foxx Shares How Daughter Saved Him During Health Battle As He Reveals Mystery Illness

In his new Netflix special, Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was…, which premiered on Tuesday, the actor detailed his health battle for the first time, revealing that he suffered a stroke.

Foxx — who shares Anelise with ex Kristin Grannis — said that during his first two weeks in the hospital, doctors were concerned because of his deteriorating vitals. However, he said after Anelise “snuck into” his room, a “miracle” occured.

“They said at one point, the first 15 days, they thought they were going to lose me because my vitals were out of control,” he said during the special. “There was a 13- or 14-day period where they said, we’ve gotta keep him calm and we’ve given him every medication that they could. It’s not working, we gotta keep him calm because his vitals are so high we’re going to lose him.”

“Do you know what the worst thing to have in a hospital room when you’re trying to keep calm in a hospital room? Black family members,” he jokingly added.

Foxx said his daughter visited him in his hospital room, and brought her guitar.

“That’s when a miracle happened, and that miracle was working through my youngest daughter. She’s 14,” he recalled. “I didn’t want her to see me like that but she snuck into my hospital room with her guitar, and she said, ‘I know what my daddy needs … that’s my daddy.'”

Foxx began to get emotional while sharing how his daughter playing the guitar helped him.

“They said when she was playing, my vitals went down,” he said, tearing up. “The nurses at the nurses’ station were baffled. Like, ‘Wow, what did they give him?’ They rushed into the room and she said, ‘Ssh. I got him.’ … Do you know what I found out? It was God was in that guitar. That’s my spiritual defibrillator.”

Anelise then joined her father on stage. Foxx cried while hugging his daughter, before Anelise and Foxx performed together.

“Play, play, play,” he emotionally told Anelise as she strummed the guitar. “Let them see your talent, shine Anelise, shine. Shine baby.”

“Anelise, thank you so much for stepping up when all was lost,” Foxx added, to which Anelise replied, “You had to make it because I always dreamed that we’d perform together onstage one day.”

The father-daughter duo performed an emotional song about Foxx’s health scare. Foxx rapped and sang, while Anelise played the guitar.

“God don’t take me, let me stay awhile / My oldest daughter’s getting married, please let me walk her down the aisle,” he sang at one point. As he referenced walking his older daughter Corinne, 30, who tied the knot in September 2024, down the aisle, a photo of the sweet moment appeared behind him on stage.

Foxx also broke down the medical emergency itself during the comedy special, recalling how he nearly lost his life after suffering a stroke.

At the time, he was filming Back in Action with Cameron Diaz in Atlanta. Then one day, Foxx said he had a “bad headache.”

“April 11, I was having a bad headache, and I asked my boy for an aspirin,” he recalled. “And I realized quickly that, when you’re in a medical emergency, your boys don’t know what the f–k to do.”

“Before I could get the aspirin,” he continued, “I went out. I don’t remember 20 days. What they told me was that they took me to the first doctor, and that doctor just gave me a cortisone shot and sent me home.”

Despite being sent home, Foxx said his sister, Deidra Dixon, knew there was something seriously “wrong” with him.

“Four-foot-eleven, and full of nothing but pure love, she said, ‘Something’s wrong with my brother,'” he recalled. “She came over to see me, and they told me I was lethargic. She says, ‘Get him in the car. That ain’t my brother right there.'”

Dixon drove her brother to Piedmont Hospital, which Foxx noted was “just 400 yards away” from where his special was filmed at the Alliance Theatre. According to Foxx, doctors told his sister that he was “having a brain bleed that has led to a stroke.”

Foxx was rushed into surgery.

“I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light. I was in that tunnel, though,” he recalled. “It was hot in that tunnel. ‘S–t, am I going to the wrong place in this motherf–ker?’ Because I looked at the end of the tunnel, and I thought I saw the devil — like, ‘Come on.'”

After being in a coma for weeks, Foxx woke up on May 4, only to discover that he was in a wheelchair.

He ultimately made a full recovery, sharing that his humor kept him going.

“I lost everything,” Foxx said, adding that “the only thing I could hold onto was my sense of humor.”

“‘If I can stay funny, I can stay alive,'” he recalled telling himself.

A day before Foxx’s Netflix special, Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was…, dropped on the streaming service, he received a 2025 Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television.

See all of the nominations here, and check out Foxx’s special, here.