Don Cheadle hates being treated "differently" just because he is in the public eye.
The ‘Miles Ahead’ star dislikes the overfamiliarity between fans and actors but understands it is part of the "contract" he signed up to when he became famous.
He said: "People treat actors and people in the public eye differently from how they’d treat anybody else in their lives. You would never come up to a stranger, throw your arm around them and say, ‘Hey, buddy, lemme get this picture.’ You think it’s OK to do that? I have a fork in my mouth with food on it, but you’re cool just to put your arm around me and pull out a phone. And if I’m like, ‘Hey, do you mind?’ It’s like, ‘Don Cheadle’s an asshole.’ So you just have to know that that’s the contract. For all this other stuff, you give that up …
"There’s always this dream of being able to shut it down. I would love to be able to do what I did in this movie [‘Miles Ahead’]: play music and not act. I would love just to go hang out and play with musicians, because that’s the most rewarding thing ever."
The 51-year-old star prefers not to have security around him as he just wants to live his life as normal as possible.
He added to The Guardian magazine: "I don’t have an entourage, I don’t have bodyguards, I don’t have security. I don’t have any of that s**t. If I’m at the store, I’m at the store. It’s just me. If I go to play poker in Commerce [a small town south of Los Angeles] or something, it’s just me.
"That’s disarming to people, too, in a way. First of all, they’re like, ‘Eh? Bulls**t. That’s not him, because he wouldn’t be here sitting at a table by himself.’ And then, once they realise who I am, they’re like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Then, after a while, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re just a dude sitting here playing cards like I am.’ I would feel weirder doing the other thing."
Don Cheadle’s fame contract
