Actor Don Cheadle has come a long way from his days on the cult-popular series Picket Fences. In fact, Cheadle has climbed the acting ranks in Hollywood to become one of the best, most respected actors on the movie scene today. After his Golden Globe winning and Academy Award nominated performance for Best Actor in the emotional 2004 hit Hotel Rwanda, Cheadle elevated his game to new heights. A staunch advocate and activist for the fight to end the human rights atrocities in Darfur, Sudan along with fellow actor George Clooney, Cheadle has found new ways in recent years to give back to the world through his celebrity.

Following his 2007 turns in Ocean's Thirteen and Darfur Now, Don Cheadle is back on the big screen as the lead in the action packed political thriller Traitor, about a U.S. Army Special Forces Engineer Sergeant working with terrorists who's forced on the run from the CIA into a world of mysterious connections, secrets, and espionage.

Prior to the August 27 release of Traitor, we followed the clues to the film's junket and press conference where Don Cheadle talked to journalists about bringing the film to life and making such an explosive, politically heated movie in the post 9/11 movie world.

How do you prepare for this character? The psychological and emotional background of the character seems very complex and nuanced, and it comes to the surface in different ways. The opening scene probably detonates the moral dilemma - just talk about how you prepared for it and how you nuanced it.

DON CHEADLE: I wish I could give you some in-depth. Well, as an actor, this is what I do and this is how I - It’s not really like that for me. I mean, I read the script and the script usually dictates what happens in the film and if it’s not fully realized, we do more research to try and pull whatever aspects we need to pull out of it to find who this character is. Then you just kind of go about making the scene what it’s supposed to be. There are things you decide about your character that don’t even ever appear, about your history and your past, and who he was and what injuries did he have and what happened when he was fighting with the Mujahideen. All of these kinds of internal decisions that somehow create who this character is when you walk on set.

You play double duty on this in that you also produce. Why was it so important to bring this film to life?

CHEADLE: I don’t know that I felt it was important per se. I thought when I read the script that there’s a very interesting concept there in that the character was very interesting, that he was wrestling personally with a lot of things that I thought the country and the world are wrestling with. So I thought it was interesting to have a character who sort of encapsulated a lot of these questions and a lot of this debate within his own person and to try and find a way in this process to justify the things that he was doing.

Is it tricky to get the emotions and things going on in a film like this and the character? They often, not in this one, but they often get very mechanical. They’re about the stunts, the locations and the bomb.

CHEADLE: Well, we knew going into it that we didn’t have the Bourne Identity budget. We weren’t going to be able to blow up things every couple of weeks, and the chases . [laughs] Really, for us it wasn’t about that anyway. It’s kind of an action thriller, an espionage thriller that happens to have its backdrop be in a world that is relevant to what’s happening today. So that was always sort of the thrust of it. The emotional thrust of it was staying with this character and going along his journey and thinking - What if I was in this person’s shoes? How would I do this? What would I do? Would I sacrifice this? Would I throw this away to maintain this? What costs are too high for me and what collateral damage can I live with?

The character is interesting once we get to understand his real identity, but there’s still... Can you talk about the kinds of struggles he’s going through?

CHEADLE: It’s something that when we sort of got into this and when I began interviewing people and going to Mosques and talking to people that - and it’s something that came out a lot when we were speaking to these people - that less than 1% of those who call themselves Muslims, and those who follow Islam, have, through the media or through whatever, seem to highjack the entire religion. This small sect of crazy people somehow are speaking louder than the millions and millions of Muslims that are not that, and they were very happy that I was portraying that. That I was playing a character that was against killing, that didn’t think that was a justifiable means to an end, to kill innocent people.

But he’s conflicted with how that works, because with the character that Said Taghmaoui plays, Omar, he sees in him someone who’s potentially thoughtful, who does question those things. If only this was another time and place we could be friends, but we’re on opposite sides right now. So all of these things are weighing on him and people talk about Samir as the good guy, but throughout the film he’s the one character you know is - People are dying as a result of his actions, so that’s what he’s dealing with the whole time. Yes, I’m supposed to be the good guy, but I’m leaving a path of destruction for the grand solution, which is to get the main guy. But on the way to getting the main guy, I look at what’s happening around me and that’s why he’s left the way he is at the end of the film.

Was it a difficult balancing act with the post 9/11 terrorist issue and the entertainment value of the film?

CHEADLE: Yeah. I mean that’s obviously the line we’re trying to tread, because I think that the job of the movie first is to entertain. You know, you want to bring people in. And entertainment doesn’t just mean it has to be like the Ocean’s movies or something, those have their place. I think you can also be entertained and have thought provoking issues at the same time. It’s not like a movie like Paradise Now. I don’t know if you know the movie but we don’t go in-depth with the motivation behind someone who’s going to strap a bomb on their body and blow themselves up for their cause. We don’t go into the depth of that, but that’s the backdrop for this film. So yes, we definitely had to be faithful to that. But mostly this is an espionage thriller and an international movie that is the background.

Can you talk about the title, Traitor? I think that concept is blurred in the movie.

CHEADLE: Exactly. Who is Samir Horn a traitor to? He appears in the beginning to be a traitor to the government, then he’s a traitor to those he’s with and he’s a traitor to his girlfriend and the ideals that they uphold. And, he thinks he’s a traitor to himself. So I think there are many levels in which that word sort of works, which was the whole idea behind the title.