Top 65 Quotes & Sayings by Don Cheadle
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Don Cheadle.
Last updated on April 16, 2025.
I think if you were to look at my resume in total you would see a lot of things that are kind of all over the map.
I think we should all be more concerned about the environment and the effects of global warming. It will be pointless to talk about all the issues that divide us when it's 300 degrees outside.
I don't believe that the U.S. needs to take a police role. I think it needs to support African nations that have said they want to become a part of the solution.
The fun for me is to mix it all up. I would actually like to do something as far away from what I've just done, just for my own personal joy and growth, for what I want to do.
The process changes slightly from role to role. Obviously, there are different things you're called on to do. You're not digging deep for Basher Tarr like I was for Paul Rusesabagina, but at the end of the day it's still all make-believe and you still are trying as realistically as you can to depict these characters.
I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).
I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.
President Obama inherited a broken country mired in two wars, a financial crisis, a mortgage mess and more than we all probably even know about and has in my opinion brought us back from the brink. But I still see my friends in no better shape and the gap widening.
I was about to write that in the future I would chose my words more carefully but I'm sure I won't.
We're trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.
I don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel.
I want to see somebody go to jail over the financial crisis and not just black, brown and poor whites over humbles and minor drug beefs.
I don't like message movies either.
I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.
I've never been a part of a film before that offers such a platform into real issues, that raises social awareness and has the potential to change things.
For me, it's always just been about finding material that I think is creative and interesting and fun and something that can expand me and that I can hopefully do something with.
I understand what's it like to work all week and on Friday night just want to go and leave your brain at the door, buy some popcorn and be thrilled by something.
People have always been obsessed by celebrities. There are just more outlets and opportunities to make a living exploiting that obsession nowadays.
But I think it's intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.
Many of my friends and family are scratching it out somewhere decidedly south of the ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, looking at losing their homes, colleges they can't afford and healthcare they can't avail themselves of.
I want to be a part of great things.
Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.
If people in this country think of Africa as a place with kids and flies swarming around their heads, then they won't understand that these people are you and you are them.
No, it's not comfortable; I hate watching myself. You don't like when you hear your voice on your voicemail; imagine having to see yourself 30 feet wide and 30 feet big.
But most scripts are terrible. Most projects are bad, that's just kind of the way it is. And I'm not really attracted to those.
I hate it when, by page 30, I know what the lead's going to do and then what the bad guy's gonna do. Mostly it's just scripts by the numbers where nothing's surprising, nothing's interesting.
It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.
We're always trailing, as far as the amount of roles that are written for us and the films that are being made that have black characters in them. I don't know if that's going to change.
I used to record but just in my own studio or in my friend's back when I toyed with the idea of being a rapper.
So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.
I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you're a black man that's always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.
I think if you're going to read reviews, you have to just concede that they are all right. And I think I read two very diametrically opposed reviews about my movie and I had to go, yeah, I agree with both of them.
I think having good family and friends really helps to ground you.
One thing that you consistently see everywhere is that the poor and the under-represented are always the ones who are going to suffer the most and get the short end of the stick.
When I'm the person in front of the microphone, and I'm the person in the light, I want to reflect and refract the light onto places where they need the attention, where I don't need it.
The best thing that I learned from the best directors that I worked with is that the best answer wins. They are ego-less when it comes to doing the most important thing.
Comedies are very hard to do. They are difficult. Unless there's the Judd Apatow school, where they're like okay, we know that, we're going to do those. Or unless it's something that's far to the other side.
If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction?
It is the least represented among us who will be the most affected first. We have a moral responsibility to protect them.
Every time I've learned something, I've realized there are a hundred more things I don't know about the thing I just learned.
We're not talking about you scored more points than me and I know that you won and I lost, those are clear results. This is about people's opinions and their subjective takes on things, people that sometimes haven't seen all of the movies they're voting on.
And it's not just black people. That's the other thing about this issue, it's conflated with just black and white and it's not that at all. It's diversity, it's something that looks more like the landscape of the country. And it's not about then we get the statues we deserve, it's not that. It's that everyone should be able to participate in this silly contest, which is how I feel about it.
It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.
I was brought into the curiosity of it because with Sony Pictures Classics, which bought the movie, they look into what the feedback is and base that off of how they release it, and you end up hearing the feedback and getting that early talk. So the reviews early on that were "bad reviews," they were kind of reviewing another movie.
I don't know what would be antithetical to do on the other side, maybe a Tyler Perry movie or something. No, there are very few comedies that live in between that. Or you're doing some kid thing like a Jim Carrey movie with animated something that's like that. Yeah, I've wanted to do them. I like doing them. I did Talk to Me. That was pretty much a comedy.
I think it’s intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.
Is there a way to discuss climate change without politics or religion getting in the way?
One truth that I know for sure, for me anyway, is that the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know.
You should do what you're supposed to do and hope that that ripples out.
I pray that our leaders stop pointing fingers and playing the blame game and seek a real solution for the good of the planet and all who inhabit it.
I'm a parent. I have kids, and what's happening with our waters, and our oceans, and what's happening with deforestation, and all these things that human beings are having negative impacts on at this time, are concerning to me. I wanted to do whatever I could to be a part of the solution and not just be a part of the problem.
Living by example - that's always a better teacher than trying to preach.
I think that it's much more important to do than to say. And you learn that a lot from your kids, who are watching you, you know?
It's much easier to cry or be angry, but to really laugh and genuinely be buoyant and laugh. That's hard if you don't really feel that way.
If you look up and no one who's around you has been around you for the past 20 years, and they're all new people, I think that's a problem.
Speak up when you're supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.
We're really trying to give people the ability to go into a darkened room and have a couple hours of just pure enjoyment.
I started following the news and seeing what was happening around the world with the polar ice caps melting and temperatures breaking records. I became concerned as an animal on this planet but also as a father.
It's important to keep the people who know you well around you. It helps center you.
Water is an issue, and, clearly, what's happening with the filth in our environment and the levels of carbon monoxide in our atmosphere are the really scary issues right now, the very troubling ones.
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