Don Cheadle

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Date of Birth : Nov 29th 1964

An Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor. Cheadle got his film breakthrough playing the role of ‘Rocket’ in the 1988 movie Colors. He can be noticed in the opening minutes of the film when he shoots a rival gang member. In 1989, he appeared in a video for Angela Winbush’s #2 hit single “It’s The Real Thing”, performing dance moves in an orange jump suit, working at a car wash.

Cheadle first received widespread notice for his portrayal of Mouse Alexander in the film Devil in a Blue Dress, for which he won Best Supporting Actor awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, and was nominated for similar awards from the Screen Actors Guild and the NAACP Image Awards. His fame spread with a recurring role as the district attorney on the television series Picket Fences. Since then he has appeared in films including Rosewood, The Family Man, Boogie Nights, a cameo appearance in the film Abby Singer, Out of Sight, Traffic, and Ocean’s Eleven (2001). These last three were directed by Steven Soderbergh. In 2005, Cheadle was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda, a story about a Hutu hotel manager in Rwanda who sheltered hundreds of Tutsis and other refugees from murderous militias during the Rwandan genocide in mid-1994. He also starred in, and was one of the producers of Crash, which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Picture.

Cheadle was to make his directorial debut with the adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Tishomingo Blues. In a July, 2007 interview he stated, “‘Tishomingo’ is dead…” Cheadle has also appeared in NFL commercials promoting the Super Bowl from 2002 to 2005. He so regularly appeared for the NFL in its Super Bowl advertising that in 2006, in a drive to have fans submit their own advertising ideas, the NFL sought his permission to reference his previous commercials to portray themselves as having no new ideas — “he quickly signed off on the idea and found it funny.” Abe Sutton (along with Etan Bednarsh), one of the finalists in this NFL contest, played on this commercial by proposing an ad where an entire team of football players are comprised of Don Cheadle.