Don Cheadle
Don Cheadle
Donald Frank "Don" Cheadle Jr. is an American actor, writer, producer, and director. He had an early role in Hamburger Hill, before building his career in the 1990s with performances in Devil in a Blue Dress, Rosewoodand Boogie Nights. He started a collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh that resulted in the films Out of Sight, Trafficand Ocean's Eleven. Other films include The Rat Pack, Things Behind the Sun, Swordfish, Crash, Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Reign Over Me, Talk to Me,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth29 November 1964
CityKansas City, MO
CountryUnited States of America
I've never been a part of a film before that offers such a platform into real issues, that raises social awareness and has the potential to change things.
I think that it's much more important to do than to say. And you learn that a lot from your kids, who are watching you, you know?
But most scripts are terrible. Most projects are bad, that's just kind of the way it is. And I'm not really attracted to those.
I don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel.
I want to be a part of great things.
Living by example - that's always a better teacher than trying to preach.
I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).
I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.
You should do what you're supposed to do and hope that that ripples out.
Speak up when you're supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.
I think having good family and friends really helps to ground you.
If you look up and no one who's around you has been around you for the past 20 years, and they're all new people, I think that's a problem.
It's important to keep the people who know you well around you. It helps center you.
Once the steam engine went away and we started moving into burning fossil fuels - not just burning them, but everything we do with oil - we've been experiencing [these problems] at an accelerated rate. The scary end-game scenario is getting closer and closer, about what we're going to be able to do to sustain life on this planet as we have come to know it. And I think this is a very real possibility, that we could be dealing with conditions we have no idea how to wrestle with.