Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx is nothing if not versatile. The all-round entertainer talks to Steve Pratt about his latest film, a challenging mix of politics and action, and why it's sexy to play the cello.

JAMIE Foxx doesn't consider himself a movie star yet. The facts suggest otherwise. Not just top billing in his new political action movie, The Kingdom, but an Oscar and armful of other prizes for his portrayal of Ray Charles in biopic Ray, plus a number one album, an entertainment company, a radio station and a six-month, sold-out stand-up and music tour.

It makes him more than a movie star, it makes him an award-winning entertainment all-rounder. Yet there's none of the preciousness or unwillingness to talk that afflicts some on achieving a modicum of fame. He's in town for The Kingdom but the conversation ranges over his many activities.

The obvious Hollywood career parallel is Cuba Gooding Jr, who won an Oscar and has gone on to do a succession of pretty awful movies. Foxx had an Oscar and a hit album in the same year, but has played it carefully since then with good results for his career.

As he began in comedy on TV, he might have been expected to do one of those on the big screen. Instead, his work has included Collateral, opposite Tom Cruise, and the film of the stage musical Dreamgirls.

He hasn't read any good comedy scripts that appealed to him. "To do a comedy right now, it's either completely slapstick or you just miss. You don't have to rush, you can sort of take your time," he says.

"Actress Ellen Barkin gave some great advice, 'hey, if you take the money, I will kick your whatever. Don't chase the money.' And she walks off. We should chase the art of it, and hopefully somewhere the money will come and success will come."

He knows all about talk of the curse of winning an Oscar and seeing your career take a tumble. He points out that people who win Oscars normally don't go on a stand-up tour for six months like he did.

"With Cuba Gooding, he's in a situation where he has to wait for something to come along. We can write what we want, we can develop what we want, and then we can go out and do a record or do stand-up, and so it's a bit of a cheat.

"While you're out on the road, you're still maintaining a certain amount of artistry in what you're doing, and you're not thirsty or making that quick step saying 'I gotta take this'."

He's not chasing the money but knows the type of roles he should be pursuing. "We had a conversation with our agency and said 'listen, it doesn't matter the age or range of the character because I think we can do it because we've done all these different things'. So find that thing that maybe no one's looking for," he says.

What they've found is The Soloist, the next film from Atonement director Joe Wright, even if it does mean Foxx learning to play the cello.

"The guy who shows me how to play is nothing like you'd think," he says. "He shows up on a Ninja motorcycle, a good-looking Asian dude, fit. He puts the cello down and there are people at my house, some ladies, and when he plays, the women... I said 'I gotta learn this right now'. And it challenges you."

The Kingdom could prove challenging for audiences with the mix of politics and action as an FBI team, led by Foxx, investigates a suicide bombing in an American compound in Saudi Arabia. This is sensitive material, although an attraction for Foxx must have been the presence of Michael Mann, who directed him in Collateral.

"A lot of times, we questioned how heavy this movie was, and how we were going to get past the heavy subject matter," Foxx reveals. "We'd be doing a scene and Peter (Berg, the director) would say 'just say this, I guarantee you, it's gonna work' and that would lift you out of this heavy thing. So having Michael there to protect the art of the film and then Peter as his protegé was a good thing."

For him, the art was the attraction with the action complementing it. He praises the performance of Ashraf Barhom, playing a Saudi police officer charged with protecting the FBI agents. "He breaks my heart. It's really our characters sharing those moments of 'where are you from? what do you do? why did you get into this?'. Hearing him say what he feels and seeing the decency of his character when you read it. That's what really attracted me to the film," says Foxx.

"The politics of it is that all of these guys are blue collar workers, they're FBI and really can't do anything. The politics happens at the beginning of the movie - here's oil, here's the interest, here's the consumer - so that's where it is, it's all money.

"You could have ended the movie with a ticker-tape parade, convertible Chevrolet, eating hot dogs. But at the end of the film, you think 'are we really like that, is there no end to it?' That's good cinema," says Foxx.

The film is set in Saudi Arabia but those scenes were shot in the Arizona desert and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, giving Foxx his first experience of that country. He was amazed at how much money there was around. "The palace was 850,000 square metres, they picked us up in a Phantom Mercedes, the security guard had a Lamborghini. It was incredible. There was one hotel that was like Vegas on steroids," he recalls.

"They were very caring towards the tourist industry and we don't see that a lot in America. We see a lot of propaganda on television, everything you see Middle Eastern is bad."

He'd already done firearms training for the movie Miami Vice, months of training with live rounds. The makers of The Kingdom had help from the FBI who showed them "the real deal" as Foxx calls it.

"They showed us a real explosion. We had to learn to adopt their characteristics. The one thing we added to the movie was the emotion. Guys who work in this field don't necessarily get emotional.

"To see a guy, and a woman, in that capacity being completely business-like. If they're not like that for one, they wouldn't get the job or be able to do it. They can't get emotional about anything - Republican, Democrat, Blue State, Red State".

He's keen to find out how well they've done their job on The Kingdom, whether the balance of entertainment and message is the right one. "Hopefully, people will see past the message to the entertainment of it. There's a difficulty in promoting the movie because you can't show people they're gonna laugh a little bit, you don't know there's gonna be some action that has nothing to do with what you think of the problems that are going on in the world.

"That being said, Peter Berg made sure you get some entertainment in the film."

* The Kingdom (15) is now showing in cinemas.