Don Cheadle already holds a Grammy and a Tony, and chases the rest
Don Cheadle is best known as an actor, yet his two Grammys came for a jazz soundtrack and an audiobook, and his Tony for producing a musical. With an Oscar nomination and 11 Emmy nominations as well, he sits among the few performers who have been nominated in every category of the EGOT.
Cheadle was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1964, to a teacher and a clinical psychologist, and the family moved often. At his Denver high school he joined the jazz band on saxophone, sang with choirs and performed in plays and mime shows, then earned a theatre degree from the California Institute of the Arts in 1986. Early television jobs were small: at 23 he played a 16-year-old on Night Court, and later Will Smith's friend Ice Tray on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Critics took notice with his turn as Mouse Alexander in Devil in a Blue Dress in 1995, and playing Sammy Davis Jr. in The Rat Pack brought a Golden Globe. Out of Sight began a long partnership with director Steven Soderbergh that ran through Traffic and the Ocean's films. His performance as hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and he co-produced Crash, the Best Picture winner. From 2010 he replaced Terrence Howard as James Rhodes, the armoured War Machine, across the Marvel films.
His musical side resurfaced in Miles Ahead, a film about Miles Davis that he spent 10 years writing and producing, then directed and starred in. It won him a Grammy for its soundtrack in 2016. A second followed in 2022 for narrating a book of reflections from John Lewis, the same year he shared a Tony as a producer of A Strange Loop.
He also has a sense of humour about himself. After appearing in NFL Super Bowl promotions from 2002 to 2005, he cheerfully let the league joke that it had run out of ideas, and one fan finalist pitched an ad where every player on a team was Cheadle. Off screen he co-founded the Not on Our Watch Project with George Clooney and others to confront mass atrocities, and campaigned over Darfur.
Source: Don Cheadle
