Funnyman Jamie Foxx was so committed to playing blind soul star Ray Charles authentically he glued his eyes shut.

The COLLATERAL star eventually decided to use prosthetics to play blind in the biopic - and even went through sessions of crippling hyperventilation.

He recalls, "We went through hours and hours and days of trying to find the way to make it look right. First we glued my eyelids closed and that was crazy. I was like, 'You gotta get me soap, this is not gonna work.'

"I hyperventilated the first few times with the prosthetics and then they finally got it right and got the method down from five hours to maybe like an hour to get them done, and made it easier.

"Once we got into the prosthetics it worked because it was like jumping into a cold pool - once you got used to it, it was great.

"They had to hold me down because it's like being in a coffin alive. That was the sense of it because I couldn't open my eyes. Even if I opened my eyes I still couldn't see anything because the prosthetics was over the whole eyelid. It was freakish."

05/10/2004 02:29