More than a year after he was struck down with a mystery “medical complication” actor Jamie Foxx has revealed he had a stroke.

Foxx revealed on his new Netflix special, Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was, that the sudden illness that led to weeks in hospital while he was filming in Atlanta in April 2023 was a “brain bleed that … led to a stroke.”

The 56-year-old comedian – who has daughters Anelise, 16, and Corinne, 30 – revealed that staff at Atlanta’s Piedmont Hospital thought they were going to “lose” him in the first 13 to 15 days of his hospitalisation as his vital health indicators were all over the place. They started falling only when his teenage daughter began strumming her guitar at his bedside.

“They said at one point, the first 15 days, they thought they were going to lose me because my vitals were out of control,” Foxx said.

“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? Black family members.”

Foxx, who is religious, said he believed God “was in that guitar” and that it acted as his “spiritual defibrillator”.

“That’s when a miracle happened, and that miracle was working through my youngest daughter. She’s 14. 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’,” he said.

“They said when she was playing, my vitals went down. 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? That God was in that guitar. That’s my spiritual defibrillator.”

Foxx’s Netflix special premiered in Australia on Tuesday, billed as a “heartfelt return” in which he “sets the record straight” and “expresses deep gratitude to those who prayed and supported his recovery, turning his show into a thank you to his fans”. It had been flagged that he would release more details about his mystery illness.

The Ray star has previously said little about his lengthy hospitalisation, referring only to having “tubes running out of me” and wondering if he was “gonna make it through”.

In August 2022, he revealed on social media that he was “a man who is thankful”, having undergone “an unexpected dark journey.” He later confirmed he would share details in his Netflix special.

“Everybody wants to know what happened, and I’m going to tell you what happened. But I’ve gotta do it in my way,” he said, according to Variety earlier this year.

“I’m gonna do it in a funny way. We’re gonna be on the stage. We’re gonna get back to the stand-up sort of roots.”

In the show, Foxx welcomes Anelise onstage to perform a moving piece to the guitar with him.

“Play, play, play,” an emotional Foxx declares.

“Let them see your talent, shine Anelise, shine baby.”

Then he says: “Anelise, thank you so much for stepping up when all was lost.”

As both wipe away tears, the teenager tells Foxx: “You had to make it because I always dreamed that we’d perform together onstage one day.”

In the tear-jerking song about the medical emergency, Jamie rapped and sang: “God don’t take me, my oldest daughter’s getting married, please let me walk her down the aisle.”

Jamie was well enough to walk daughter Corinne down the aisle in September, when she married TV director Joe Hooten.

-with AAP