The Don - interview with actor Don Cheadle - Interview

Interview, August, 1997 by Justine Elias

Every actor has his Hamlet story, and Don Cheadle is no exception. But when Cheadle talks about the time he and a few friends, fresh out of drama school and between acting jobs, performed Shakespeare in a Hollywood parking lot, the story isn't about his great triumph in the leading role (he played Horatio); it's about the thrill of connecting with an audience. "We did it on skid row - real guerrilla theater," he says. "it was tight. It was really good. We had no money and we didn't charge anything. But we got food from some restaurants and fed people. It was amazing: We'd look out into the audience and see homeless people saying the words with us."

Cheadle's habit of losing himself in his projects has electrified his film performances in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Rebound: The Legend of Earl "the Goat" Manigault (1997), and Rosewood (1997). It's a habit that may tag the thirty-two-year-old actor as one who cares more about the story than his part in it. But his high-profile work in the spring disaster epic Volcano and the fall's Boogie Nights is finally bringing him recognition, a decade after he made his debut in Hamburger Hill (1987).

In Boogie Nights, set in the adult film industry of the '70s, Cheadle, Mark Wahlberg, and Julianne Moore play porn stars in search of respect. It's a movie that's likely to ignite controversy because of director Paul Thomas Anderson's apparent refusal to downplay the drugs and promiscuity that, in the '70s, came with the territory.

A father of two, the lean, compact, and self-effacing Cheadle chose to do this interview at his favorite Chinese restaurant, a modest place in Marina Del Rey where the waiters dote on him.

JUSTINE ELIAS: How do you prepare to play a porn star?

DON CHEADLE: A lot of sex, Constant, kinky sex.

JE: Now that's a lie.

DC: Right. Not really. I play Buck Swope, porn star extraordinaire, who dreams of normalcy and a narrow, nine-to-five life. His back story isn't in the movie, but I think Buck came from a family where he wasn't really understood or accepted. He's a good-hearted guy, and I imagine he's naive about the work he's doing; he doesn't realize its effect on people. He gets into an argument with a bank manager when the guy says, "Look, I can't give you a loan because you're a pornographer." And Buck says, "No way, I'm an actor," He loves what he's doing and believes it's art, and he loves the little misfit family he's in.

JE: Like The People vs. Larry Flynt, Boogie Nights is a movie about an X-rated industry. Were you apprehensive about the subject matter, the nudity required, and the way you would be treated?

DC: I had a lot of trepidation, yes. I talked to Julianne Moore [who plays an actress named Amber Waves], who I'd worked with a long time ago on a Jean Genet play at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. I called her and said, "What's up with this script'? Are you down with this?" And she told me she got a real good feeling from Paul [Anderson]. I did too, but I was still nervous about how the film would come off. I didn't want to be naked and exploited. I wanted the film to take a deep look at these people. And it does.

JE: How were adult films twenty years ago different from those of today?

DC: Back then, they tried to have stories and romance and intrigue and mystery. The actors took their jobs seriously. They wanted to look like real people, and they weren't just jacking off on film - they were trying to make something sexy. Boogie Nights is about a producer's disgust at what the industry becomes as it moves from film to video. These days, it's just about product and mass production. Many adult films don't make it to theaters anymore - they just go straight to video.

JE: What was your first acting job?

DC: I was Templeton the rat in Charlotte's Web in fifth grade; that's when I got the acting bug. I'd always been creative, and I sang with the band at my elementary school in Kansas City [Mo.] where the music teacher really helped me focus. I did a lot of plays and musicals in high school and then went straight to Cal Arts in Valencia, which is a conservatory training program for theater and visual arts.

JE: What did you do for your audition?

DC: My first monologue was from Moliere's Tartuffe. I needed a classical piece, and I picked the first monologue that had archaic language in meter and said. OK I'll learn this. But what did I know about Moliere? I didn't know this shit was supposed to be funny.

JE: Was it like, "Thank you. Next!"?

DC: Almost. I had to say, "Wait! I have another piece!" I did something from The Shadow Box, which I knew well and understood. The dean took me aside later and said, "Do me a favor. Don't try Moliere again until you know what you're doing." I loved Cal Arts. I knew I would be acting all the time there. You might not get the part you want, but you know you're going to be in twenty-four plays no matter what. Then you get out of school and you get five hundred noes to one yes.

JE: But for the most part, that hasn't happened to you. You've been working steadily since you finished school.