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Some guys are hard workers, others are genuine workaholics. This year, Don Cheadle definitely fell into the latter category.
Just consider the Kansas City native's fall slate: After the Sunset was barely out of the multiplexes when
"On my what?" is how the affable actor responds to a question about how he spent his free time during his first trip to Africa on a three-month stint as star of "Hotel Rwanda." The film substitutes Johannesburg for the war-torn land where Hutu extremists slaughtered their Tutsi neighbors in a civil war turned full-blown genocide (in just 100 days the death toll approached one million). "I had one three-day weekend where I went to Capetown," Cheadle admits, "I took my whole family. Actually, when we got there on Christmas, we went on safari for about five days." But just after safari, the daily grind of portraying Paul Rusesabagina - a reluctant hero who uses his hotel to save 1,200 refugees - kicked in. "We started rehearsals as soon as we came back," Cheadle recalls, "I was doing a film that book-ended this one, so I got three quarters of that shot and then flew to Africa to start Hotel Rwanda. The day we One of the things that happened is Cheadle met his co-star Sophie Okonedo. She made a splash last year playing a prostitute in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, but admits some apprehension around meeting Cheadle. She needn't have worried as their on-screen chemistry is palpable. And clearly some of Cheadle's work ethic rubbed off. After the three-month shoot in Johannesburg, Okonedo returned to her native London to shoot a British TV show, and then she went "straightaway" to Berlin to play villain opposite Charlize Theron's "Aeon Flux," where, she reports, she "kicked butt." Describing Cheadle, who plays her connoisseur husband who makes time for a glass of red wine as mortar shells fall, she turns serious. "Don is just wonderful," she says, "He speaks the truth, and when you're with an actor that's so truthful, it just ups your performance. You listen well, and it makes the job that much easier." That advice didn't make Cheadle's life any easier. Before he became involved with Hotel Rwanda, he classifies his knowledge of the war there as "cursory." He credits a documentary on Frontline with opening his eyes. "They did a real in-depth look at Rwanda," he explains. "So when I read the script I was already primed and knocked out that the writers were able to tell a story that wasn't only about genocide; this is a love story wrapped in a thriller with impending doom closing in. Telling Paul's singular story helped take us through some events that otherwise may have been too big to deal with." And now that the story's been told, Cheadle finds it impossible to turn a blind eye to other war-torn African nations. "I saw footage of stacks of bodies people used as roadblocks with kids sitting on top drinking beer," he says, "That has inspired me to get involved. We're showing the movie to the UN this week. Amnesty International is very involved. I have a meeting with the Congressmen who chair the Subcommittee on African Affairs to deal with the Sudan and also we're going back to Rwanda with the movie. Still, you feel a certain amount of shame that these things happen all the time. Everyone has flipped through a magazine and seen a starving child sitting next to some white woman saying, "Please, give." You think, If I give this money, all I hear are stories about how it's going to warlords and the food's not getting there and who am I giving to and what's this organization? This film inspired me to not just ask those questions in a vacuum, but really find out. I'm going to Africa next year to try and just get involved." But even that decision won't happen in a vacuum for Cheadle. "My kids are still at that age where they run when I open the door at night," he laughs, "They can't wait -- 'Daddy, Daddy!' - when I come home. So I'd have to bring this, like anything else, to the dinner table and say, "Okay, this is what this is and this is what it will mean...." |
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