Foxx: Django Unchained is a love story

Los Angeles - Jamie Foxx says Django Unchained is a love story.

The Oscar-winning actor plays the titular character in the spaghetti western, whose main goal in life is to recover his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) but first needs to get past the villainous ranch Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who runs club Candyland, where his spouse and other female slaves are exploited as sex objects and Jamie believes the husband/wife relationship is the most important one in the movie.

He told Empire magazine: "The one thing that stuck out to me in the script was that Django got married. Back then to be married was taboo. You could be killed ...

"The strongest buck would mate with the strongest black woman so they could get stronger slaves. They didn't want black people married. So Django being married was a big thing for me. This is a love story.

"He's not trying to stop slavery. He's not trying to do anything but find the love of his life - which is like trying to find a needle in a world of haystacks."

Meanwhile, director Quentin Tarantino says people will be uncomfortable with the racism in the movie but it is important to show how "fucked-up" America used to be.

He explained: "[The racism] is what I wanted to deal with and that's the reason to do it. it's not to avoid it, it's absolutely to deal with that. Show how America was back then and how fucked-up we were."