Jamie Foxx knew what he wanted from Miami Vice. It wasn’t the fashion, the sunshine or the girls. The biggest thrill was getting his hands on a Ferrari F430 convertible, the car of choice for his undercover cop Ricardo Tubbs and partner Sonny Crockett, played by Colin Farrell.

“The car’s top speed is 200mph,” says Foxx admiringly. “But we couldn’t get anywhere near that fast because of insurance restrictions. The closest we came was watching stunt guys put the car through its paces. When you see the car at slower speeds — and that’s fast enough — it is us at the wheel.”

Foxx, 38, agreed to be in the film only if there was more gritty substance than style. He was a fan of the original television series, which ended in 1989. “But that was before it became a fashion statement,” he says. “Towards the end everyone was talking about the clothes. It had lost its edge.”

So when the director Michael Mann contacted Foxx, who won a best actor Oscar in 2004 for playing the singer Ray Charles in Ray, he was unequivocal about his terms. “I told him that if we could get back to how the TV series was at the start, with fast cars, guns and tough scenes, then I was in,” he reports. “I particularly remember the cars, thinking ‘I would love to be behind the wheel on a chase’.”

Foxx’s first car was a 1972 VW Beetle. He now owns a Lamborghini, so the television series may have given him ideas. It used a replica Ferrari Daytona Spider built onto a Corvette chassis until Ferrari, impressed by the success of the show, offered to supply a Testarossa. A black one was replaced by a white one so it would stand out in night shots. Tubbs also drove a 1962 Cadillac Coupe deVille convertible. Other glamorous cars had bit parts.

For Foxx, the Ferrari F430, in metallic grey — or Grigio Silverstone to give its official colour — in his movie version gave him a thrill after weeks spent driving Tom Cruise around in a clapped out taxi in Collateral. It won him a best supporting actor Oscar nomination but also made him saddle-sore. “I have never spent longer in a movie just sitting down,” he says. “If I’d have spent as long in the Ferrari as I in the taxi, I’d have been happy.”

But who would he want alongside him if he could have driven the Ferrari away at the end of filming? Certainly not Colin Farrell (who owns an MG Midget back in Ireland), that’s for sure. “Halle Berry would be perfect,” he says. “She’s the only actress I’ve met who looks even better in the flesh than on screen.

“They usually look so disappointing without all the hair and make-up. When I run in to these women, I think: ‘What happened?’ But, with Halle she is so beautiful that when you get close, you just think: ‘Oh my God.’ Everyone in the room takes one look and starts gravitating towards her. So who else would you want to be with in a Ferrari convertible than her? Man, that would be heaven.”

Foxx certainly talks the talk and looks the part when we meet. He wears a sharp grey suit and has diamond earrings reflecting the sunshine. His hair is cropped and it seems as if it would take one heck of a wind speed to deflect an air of drop-dead coolness, a poise he attributes to his grandmother who bought him up in Texas.

“She told me: ‘I want you to walk tall, like a Southern gentleman’,” he recalls. “Whenever we went out, she would be telling me: ‘Stand up straight, put your shoulders back, don’t slouch.’ I appreciated the way she kept me on the straight and narrow. I concentrated on things like piano lessons, sport and then comedy.”

The piano lessons paid off because Foxx has developed a successful second-string career as a musical performer, with a No 1 album, Unpredictable, to his credit.

When he switched from comedy to acting, he says, there were those who refused to take him seriously. “You can get some rough treatment. I have learnt that people react to fame in two ways. If they are insecure and difficult, they become far worse. If they are already nice people — and George Clooney is a perfect example — they give fame a good name.”

He’s also co-starring with another actress who he says gives fame a good name, Beyoncé Knowles, in Dreamgirls, based on the story of the Supremes and Diana Ross. It is released early next year.

“If Halle can’t make that drive of a lifetime,” says Foxx, “then Beyoncé would be a great replacement. Aren’t I the lucky guy?”

ON HIS CD CHANGER

I listened to Ray Charles, below, non-stop while preparing for my role in Ray. The Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer is guaranteed to get you in the mood as well as bands and artists who contributed to the show like Jackson Browne

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