Don Cheadle directs, stars in Miles Davis biopic

Perhaps Don Cheadle never knew he was so cool. But when Miles Davis’ nephew, Vince Wilburn Jr., decreed that only Mr. Cheadle could play the jazz great in a film, Mr. Cheadle sat up and took notice.

“When Miles was being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, [Mr. Wilburn] said, ’This is the dude to play my uncle,’ unbeknownst to me,” Mr. Cheadle recently told The Washington Times. “Once he made that announcement, people started calling me going, ’Hey, when is this movie coming out?’”

It took a decade, but on Friday moviegoers throughout the District can see Mr. Cheadle channel the coolest man who ever lived in “Miles Ahead,” in which he not only plays Davis but also directs and co-wrote the screenplay.

After 70-plus films to his credit, “Miles Ahead” marks Mr. Cheadle’s big-screen directorial debut. Mr. Cheadle said it was important to him that a film about Davis’ raucous life be much more than simply hitting all the beats of a typical musical biopic.

“I wanted to do something that would feel more like a Miles Davis composition. I wanted to do something that felt like ’Bitches Brew’ to me,” Mr. Cheadle said, comparing his film aspirations with Davis’ iconic 1970 double album. “All these different elements can … crash into each other — and something that feels kind of gangster and crazy. I wanted to do a movie that Miles Davis would want to star in.”

Despite having once been nominated for an Oscar as well as several Golden Globes and Emmys, Mr. Cheadle and his producers found that seed money to get the film off the ground was tough to come by, even after he’d joined the Marvel superuniverse as War Machine in the “Iron Man” and “Avengers” films.

“It’s always the trial,” Mr. Cheadle said of anxious filmmakers always scrambling for financial backing. “You see studio movies, and you know what kind of movies they’re doing. But it’s tricky on the other side when you’re trying to cobble together [funding] as best you can” for an independent feature.

The script for “Miles Ahead” touches on various times in the late trumpeter’s life. While celebrating his music genius, the script doesn’t shy away from Davis’ drug abuse, womanizing and propensity to violence — the price of his virtuosity.

“Especially as an actor, I think we’re trying to find the humanity in a person,” Mr. Cheadle said of not shying away from the darker aspects of Davis’ psyche. “Who’s the person behind that cool facade? How do you play someone who’s cool? What does that even mean?

“I love hearing Miles talk about himself and saying things like ’Is it cooler to tap my whole shoe when I’m keeping time or to tap my foot inside my shoe?’ That totally belies someone who’s cool. That’s someone who is thinking about it. That’s human.”

Mr. Cheadle studied music as a young man but ultimately decided he would concentrate on acting for his career. For “Miles Ahead” he learned the trumpet to approximate the jazz legend’s sound — no easy task. While Mr. Cheadle indeed played the brass instrument himself on set, what is heard on the soundtrack is either recordings of Davis himself or a dubbing by current trumpet great Keyon Harrold.

“I picked up the horn about eight years ago and learned what to do and how to do it,” Mr. Cheadle said of preparing for the role. “I learned all [Davis’] solos.”

Mr. Cheadle wore many hats on the set of “Miles Ahead.” While he was portraying Davis, he also had to constantly handle all of the numerous tasks that come with directing a film and field questions from all of his production’s department heads. To the best of his ability, Mr. Cheadle said, he stayed in character as much as possible “without being ridiculous,” even when making professional decisions as a movie director.

“When I got in the makeup chair and we’d get the wig on, I would try to try to stay [in character] as much as I could and direct from that place as Miles so that it wasn’t so jarring to the entire process to come in and out of that so much,” Mr. Cheadle said.

Mr. Cheadle has stunning onscreen chemistry with co-star Ewan McGregor, who portrays a fictionalized Rolling Stone scribe writing about Davis’ 1970s-era “comeback.” While Mr. Cheadle heaped praise on his co-star, he said the film schedule was so grueling that he had little time to actually enjoy acting with the Scottish star.

“I was burning it at all ends very, very hard,” he said, adding that the task of accurately bringing Davis back to life made him a “neurotic mess.”

“All of our discussions in the van every morning were, ’So what did you take to sleep last night?’”

At one point, he said, his wife came to visit the Cincinnati set and threatened to return her exhausted husband back to Los Angeles.

“We bleed for the things we really believe in and want to see done right, and if I had to go into the hospital for something, it might as well be this,” Mr. Cheadle said with a laugh.

Mr. Cheadle has acted for such Hollywood heavyweights as Warren Beatty, P.T. Anderson, John Singleton and Robert Zemeckis, and was nominated for an Oscar for “Hotel Rwanda,” which told the true-life story of a hotel manager who shielded Tutsis from Hutu machete mobs during the Rwandan genocide.

Mr. Cheadle has achieved such pop culture notoriety that his name is also frequently dropped in rap lyrics.

“It’s fun, especially when it’s cats that I listen to,” Mr. Cheadle said with a smile. “I’m a quotable. That’s dope.”

Mr. Cheadle will next be seen in “Captain America: Civil War,” opening May 6. While such projects certainly pay the bills, he is thankful that he realized “Miles Ahead” after so much years and so many obstacles. He said that recognizing Davis’ arc as a musician helped him appreciate the struggle of all artists.

“I think the most confirming thing about him was that he was always about change,” Mr. Cheadle said about his avatar. “He never wanted to rest in any genre [and] there was almost no satisfaction with what he did ever. And that is inspiring in a way as an artist.

“To always be in a place of the unknown and setting yourself up to constantly be surprised is something as an actor we always want to be — you always want to be in the moment,” he said. “You want to do something that is jumping off of a ledge, and that’s what Miles was all about.”