Cheadle Is Man For Mars Trip

The new sci-fi flick Mission to Mars stars Don Cheadle, who also appeared in Boogie Nights, Out of Sight and Devil in a Blue Dress. To get into the spirit of his newest movie, Mission to Mars, The Early Show's Mark McEwen spoke with Cheadle at the restaurant Mars 2112 in New York City.

Did he eat Mars bars?

"I ate Mars bars," he dutifully replies.

Cheadle has been very selective about the roles he's chosen, so what made Mission to Mars pass the muster?

"When I read the script,...it locked me in because, because I couldn't anticipate it page to page," he says. "(A) lot of times you read a script, you know who's going to die, who's going to live."

Cheadle worked on the film as part of a roster of well-known established stars, including Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise. "Having these two directors on the set the whole time, do it this way, do it this way," he recalls.

To prepare for his astronaut role on the red planet, Cheadle spent a few nights sleeping on the set in what's known as the "Hab," his base camp on Mars.

"How do you prepare to be on Mars stranded for a year? I mean, no one - I didn't read any book of anyone who had done it, who could come back and say, 'When I did it, this was how I felt,' you know," he says.

"I wanted to be familiar with what my living space would've been for that year. So at night, no one's there. And it's quiet, and it's dark, and it can get a little creepy, and you let your mind start to wander," Cheadle says.

Cheadle's acting hasn't been confined to the big screen. He starred as Sammy Davis Jr. in HBO's The Rat Pack, and won a Golden Globe.

"That experience, that was a lot of fun, 'cause that was a lot like theater, actually," he says of portraying Davis. "I personally had a trumpet tutor, a drum tutor, a gun-throwing tutor, and Savion Glover choreographed it. So Savion was my tap tutor. You can't pussyfoot. You can't half step. You have to really sell it and go for it."

As an actor who works a lot would he call himself a "hot actor?"

"I don't know if any actor feels like they're just hot," he says. "Maybe a few could say that who are arguably hot. I don't get 50 scripts coming to my door. I've been lucky enough to get ones that I've wanted to do, and it's worked out that I've been able to do them. But it's not - it ain't Easy Street."

"There's just not a lot of good scripts, period. And of the ones that are good, the roles that are written for me, if they're not going to Will or Wesley or Sam," he says, "I have been fortunate for the ones that have been left, that I have wanted to do."

Cheadle is also the father to two girls.

"I don't want to ever to be in anything that I cannot explai why I did it. But my mom said something when I had my girls, she said, 'Your carefree days are over, not your good days, not your special days, but your carefree days over,'" he recalls.

One of Cheadle's upcoming projects is Fail Safe, George Clooney's live television drama to be broadcast on CBS next month. Fail Safe will also feature Richard Dreyfuss, Harvey Keitel, Brian Dennehy and Noah Wyle.