Don Cheadle was born on November 29, 1964, in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in a family that moved often before settling in Denver. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater from CalArts in 1986 and began working in film and television almost immediately, with early roles in Hamburger Hill and Colors.
His breakthrough came as Mouse Alexander in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), opposite Denzel Washington. The performance brought Best Supporting Actor honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. A title role as basketball legend Earl “The Goat” Manigault in the HBO film Rebound followed, and a run of collaborations with Steven Soderbergh, including Out of Sight, Traffic and the Ocean’s trilogy, made him a steady presence in ensemble films.
In Hotel Rwanda (2004), he played Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who sheltered people during the Rwandan genocide, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also co-produced Crash, which won the Best Picture Oscar for 2005.
On television, his work as Marty Kaan in House of Lies brought a Golden Globe Award and several Emmy nominations, with further nominations for Black Monday and for his return as James “Rhodey” Rhodes, also known as War Machine, in the Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He first joined the Marvel films in Iron Man 2 in 2010.
Cheadle has also worked behind the camera. He directed and starred in Miles Ahead (2016), a film about Miles Davis, and won a Grammy Award for the film’s soundtrack. In 2022, he won a second Grammy for narrating the audiobook of John Lewis’s Carry On and shared a Tony Award as a producer of the musical A Strange Loop. His advocacy has included work on the crisis in Darfur and service as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme.
In a 2018 Blackfilm interview, Cheadle recalled knowing early that he wanted to act and receiving family support to attend CalArts. Discussing his Marvel work, he emphasized the characters’ relationships and continuing personal stories alongside the large-scale action, and said producing allowed him to remain involved with projects beyond filming.
