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
If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction?
You should do what you're supposed to do and hope that that ripples out.
Living by example - that's always a better teacher than trying to preach.
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?
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 don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel.
When I'm the person in front of the microphone, and I'm the person in the light, I want to reflect and refract the light onto places where they need the attention, where I don't need it.
I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you're a black man that's always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.
Is there a way to discuss climate change without politics or religion getting in the way?
It is the least represented among us who will be the most affected first. We have a moral responsibility to protect them.
I hate it when, by page 30, I know what the lead's going to do and then what the bad guy's gonna do. Mostly it's just scripts by the numbers where nothing's surprising, nothing's interesting.
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.
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'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.