Don Cheadle

Donald Frank Cheadle Jr. was born on November 29, 1964, in Kansas City, Missouri, to Bettye Cheadle, a teacher, and Donald Frank Cheadle Sr., a clinical psychologist. He has a sister, Cindy, and a brother, Colin. The family relocated frequently during his childhood, and Cheadle attended Hartley Elementary School in Lincoln, Nebraska, from 1970 to 1974 before his family moved again. He graduated from East High School in Denver, Colorado, in 1982, where he played saxophone in the jazz band, sang in choirs, and participated in the theater department, taking part in musicals, plays, and mime shows. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater from the California Institute of the Arts in 1986.

While at CalArts, Cheadle performed in productions including Athol Fugard's Master Harold...and the Boys and The Island. His screen career began when he appeared as a burger joint employee in the 1985 comedy Moving Violations, which made him eligible for his Screen Actors Guild card. In 1987, he took a small role in the seventh season of Hill Street Blues and appeared in Hamburger Hill. Early television work also included a guest role on Night Court in 1988, an appearance on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1990, and a starring role as hotel manager Roland Wilson in The Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace in 1992. He subsequently played district attorney John Littleton across three seasons of Picket Fences.

Cheadle first attracted widespread critical attention for his portrayal of Mouse Alexander in the 1995 film Devil in a Blue Dress, earning Best Supporting Actor recognition from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, along with nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and the NAACP Image Awards. He followed that with the title role in the 1996 HBO film Rebound: The Legend of Earl "The Goat" Manigault, then appeared in John Singleton's historical drama Rosewood and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, both in 1997. His role as Sammy Davis Jr. in the 1998 television film The Rat Pack brought him a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. The following year he starred as Grant Wiggins in A Lesson Before Dying, based on the Ernest J. Gaines novel, which won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.

Cheadle's collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh began with Out of Sight in 1998 and continued through Traffic in 2000, in which he played DEA agent Montel Gordon, and the Ocean's trilogy, where he portrayed Basher Tarr alongside an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy García, and Julia Roberts. He reprised the role in Ocean's Twelve in 2004 and Ocean's Thirteen in 2007, and later reunited with Soderbergh for No Sudden Move in 2021. In 2004, Cheadle received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina in the historical drama Hotel Rwanda. The following year, he starred in and co-produced Crash, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005; his performance in that film also earned him BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

On television, Cheadle earned Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for playing Marty Kaan in House of Lies from 2012 to 2016 and Maurice Monroe in Black Monday from 2019 to 2021. Additional Emmy nominations came for The Rat Pack, A Lesson Before Dying, Things Behind the Sun, ER, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe beginning with Iron Man 2 in 2010, portraying James "Rhodey" Rhodes, also known as War Machine. In total, Cheadle has received nominations for an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and eleven Primetime Emmy Awards, placing him among a small group of performers to have received nominations across the EGOT categories.

His music-related accolades include two Grammy Awards. In 2016, he won Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media for the Miles Ahead soundtrack, and in 2022 he received a second Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for his narration of Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation from John Lewis. That same year, Cheadle received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer of A Strange Loop. He appeared on Broadway in 2026 in Proof, extending a stage career that stretches back to his undergraduate years in the theater.