The right man to grab the mike

YEARS before Howard Stern began paying fines to the Federal Communications Commission, Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene was electrifying the Washington, D.C., airwaves with his frank, uncensored discussions of racial pride, poverty and justice during the civil rights era. And if dancing around in nothing but an Afro wig and bright blue 1960s-era skivvies is what it was going to take to bring Greene’s life to the big screen, well, that was OK with Don Cheadle.

“Those were mesh underwear, by the way, and see-through,” says Cheadle, who stars as Greene in Focus Features’ “Talk to Me,” which kicks off the Los Angeles Film Festival on Thursday and opens July 13 elsewhere in Southern California.

“He was irreverent to say the least,” Cheadle says of Greene, “and didn’t give a you-know-what to say the most. He was a much different kind of character than I had played before.”

After DJing in prison and being paroled early for talking down a suicidal inmate, Greene found a mentor and manager in WOL-AM radio producer Dewey Hughes, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. The film chronicles the unlikely friendship between the two men from the early 1960s until Greene’s death in 1984. Martin Sheen costars as the conservative station owner, Cedric the Entertainer plays rival DJ Nighthawk, and Taraji P. Henson takes on the role of Greene’s fiery girlfriend, Vernell.

“We rehearsed, like, once,” says Henson of the movie. “He was like, ‘I really don’t want to do this scene over and over and over, and then it doesn’t leave us anywhere to go.’ I knew who this woman was, I knew the relationship that she had with Petey, and so did he.”

While the dancing scene sets the film squarely in the late ‘60s, it was how well Greene’s story meshed with current themes and with Cheadle’s growing unwillingness to confine himself strictly to the realm of entertainment that attracted the actor, who also executive produced the film.

“It’s definitely relevant because of the lack of people just saying how they feel -- especially from politicians,” he says. “There’s such a dearth of it now and such a need for honesty and straight-up-ness and opinion as much as actual truth. It’d be great to really know what people thought as opposed to just glad-handing you and walking away with a smile. You knew where he stood, and that’s refreshing.”

Since very few recordings of Greene’s show still exist, Cheadle had to glean a sense of the DJ’s flamboyant personality from old newspaper clips and conversations with the real Dewey Hughes, who served as a consultant on the film.

A project gains traction

ONE of Cheadle’s biggest challenges was lowering the register of his voice to approximate Greene’s. “That’s part of the character to me,” he says. “You have to affect some manner of that and understand what it came from. I mean, I could never get mine to exactly where his was, but that came from years and years and years of very hard living.”

Films with predominantly black casts are notoriously hard to finance, and “Talk to Me” was no exception. The late Ted Demme tried to get traction on the project years ago, but it didn’t get its green light until producer Bill Horberg at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment took a liking to the story. Director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) became involved when the script was sent to her for a polish.

At one point, Terrence Howard was attached to play Greene and Cheadle was signed on for the Hughes role. “People are used to seeing the more dignified side of Don and this role [of Petey] is kind of wacky,” says Lemmons. “I knew him well enough to know that he was very, very funny. Honestly, I thought that he was the kind of actor who could do either role.” So the actors switched parts, putting Cheadle in the lead role. When Howard later dropped out of the production, Ejiofor stepped in as Hughes.

For Cheadle, that artistic versatility also includes music and a brief stint as a comedian -- he did stand-up for about three weeks as a teen. “It made me realize that it’s something I would never ever try to do seriously,” he says. “We used to do stupid stuff like dissect the humor of the ‘Nancy’ comics. The jokes were so pedestrian and banal, but we would seriously dissect it like it was high-concept comedy,” he says of himself and his friends.

After graduating from high school in Denver, Cheadle was torn between pursuing jazz or acting. “I made a weather choice,” he says from the comfort of his temperate Santa Monica home. “ ‘I don’t really want to go to Carnegie Mellon. I don’t want to go to Pittsburgh. I’ll just go to L.A.’ And I entered CalArts and started working in my junior year and just never turned back.”

As it turns out, it may not have been an either-or proposition. “He has a complete calmness to him,” says Ejiofor. “You need that if you’re going to improvise, just a real relaxed assurance. That’s a jazz skill. I mean, the great jazz musicians never break a sweat.”

Before long, Cheadle will be calling upon his jazz training even more directly. Through his new shingle, Crescendo Productions, he is poised to star in, produce and make his directorial debut on a biopic of jazz legend Miles Davis. In preparation, Cheadle -- whose musical background encompasses saxophone, drums, piano and vocals -- has already begun practicing the trumpet for about two hours a day.

“Don’s interested in the whole process,” says Steven Soderbergh, who directed the actor in “Out of Sight,” “Traffic” and the “Ocean’s” series. “He likes to take notice of how scenes are staged and then how they’re shot, how the images are constructed and put together. You can tell he’s absorbing all of that, as I could tell George [Clooney] was when I first started working with George.”

Cheadle and Clooney also share an interest in activism and have teamed up to speak out against the genocide in Darfur. Cheadle was recently one of six subjects of “An Indifferent World,” an independent documentary about the crisis, and is the co-author of a handbook for activism called “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond.”

“Before ‘Hotel Rwanda’ came out, I think many people didn’t even know where Rwanda was or had even heard of it, and I think the film changed that,” he says of his 2004 film in which he played a hotel manager who housed Tutsi refugees to save them from the Hutu militia (a role for which he received an Oscar nomination).

“And, similarly,” he says, “I believe that all this attention that has been going on for Darfur has really started to get people’s attention -- not just on a grass-roots level, but people in positions of power. You know, I was asked to meet with Condoleezza Rice and right after that went and testified for a Senate subcommittee on genocide. And I think all of this is starting to be a viral awareness.”

His efforts haven’t gone unnoticed in Hollywood either.

“He sounds like a fictitious character because it would be hard to find somebody who says something bad about him,” says Paul Haggis, writer-director of “Crash,” in which Cheadle starred. Acknowledging that such praise probably comes across as insincere Hollywood-speak, Haggis promises: “It’s actually true. I would out him [otherwise] but he’s just a gem. He does a lot of charity work, especially with the environment.”

Anonymously famous

DESPITE such popularity within the industry, Cheadle enjoys a degree of anonymity with the public. “Everywhere we went around New York City, no one was really sure who he was,” recalls Mike Binder, who directed him in “Reign Over Me.” “The day we shot all the driving-around-on-the-scooter scenes, everyone would be yelling out, ‘Hey, Adam Sandler ... and Wesley Snipes!’ Or then another guy would go, ‘Adam Sandler, we love you!’ And then the other guy goes, ‘Hey, it’s Tim Meadows from “Saturday Night Live”!’ ”

That may be because Cheadle steers clear of the tabloids and leads a relatively quiet life with his partner, actress Bridgid Coulter, and their two young daughters.

“Most of the time, I’m not really keen about talking about myself,” he says. “That ain’t the most fun.”

In a culture where the star-making machinery is fueled more by the paparazzi than the film critics, he should be able to maintain his comfortably low profile -- after all, there’s not much chance he’ll break out those blue mesh underwear for all to see on the Sunset Strip.