Essence.com Grills Academy Award-nominated actor Don Cheadle

Don Cheadle: The Actor's Actor
6 Questions with the Academy Award-nominated actor and activist
By Jesse Washington

Essence.com: So we hear you're working on a movie about Miles Davis. What will it be like?
Don Cheadle: The Miles movie I'm trying to do is not some traditional biopic. It's an interpretation of himself, more than it is attempting to be some sort of cradle-to-grave, historically accurate depiction of who he was. The first line in our movie, with him in the dark, is of him saying ‘Some of this s--t might have happened.'

Essence.com: Are you focused more now on playing the leading man?
D.C.: I've played the lead in many movies…to me it's mostly just that I want to play interesting characters in interesting movies, that I'm engaged in and that get me excited.

Essence.com: What challenges you as an actor?
D.C.: Places I haven't been before, characters I haven't explored before, subject matter , things that I think are part of the zeitgeist that aren't being talked about in the specific way that I think the movie can talk about them.

Essence.com: Are there any parts you can't get at this point in your career?
D.C: The dentist in Reign Over Me was originally written for Javier Bardem. We changed relatively little. We all know that Black dentist, you know. We've probably all been to that guy and had our teeth cleaned; that guy is a real guy who walks and talks. Obviously being a Black man in America, stories resonate with us in a different way. It's not necessarily defined by that, but it is influenced and enhanced and definitely impacted by that. Still that doesn't mean that every story that we are involved in centers around that.

Essence.com: What is the hardest thing to overcome in Hollywood?
D.C.: Once you do something in this business, people are always trying to define you and put you in a box.

Essence.com: You played some extraordinary characters over your career. Do you still feel challenged by the roles you play?
D.C.: I always like to play roles without parameters. Even in my short lifetime in this business, over 20 years, which I consider to be pretty short in this business, I see a progression. I always believed, though clearly I know I'm Black, that there were a wide range of roles I could play. I grew up in theater and we played everything.