Actor seeks audience for movie on Rwanda saviour

He claims he doesn't need the attention, but for weeks actor Don Cheadle has been meeting people, shaking hands and doing some Hollywood politicking to persuade Oscar voters to see his new film Hotel Rwanda.

The actor is waging the Oscar campaign - media interviews, public appearances and industry hobnobbing - because he believes a nomination will draw audiences to a film with a serious and disturbing subject, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Cheadle acts as real-life hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who helped save some 1200 people from mass murder. The film is a hard sell for studio marketers.

And it may be even more difficult for Cheadle in the battle for the best actor Oscar in which he will likely face Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx and Johnny Depp, also playing subjects in biographical films - respectively aviator Howard Hughes, singer Ray Charles and Peter Pan creator J M Barrie.

"To me, that qualification 'best actor', you can't quantify it, so it doesn't make sense ... but for this film, given the subject matter and the difficulties that exist in selling it, fine, I welcome all of the attention," Cheadle told Reuters.

Oscar nominations greatly boost attendance. Last year's Monster about a lesbian serial killer had an uncertain fate at US box offices until Charlize Theron began winning awards for best actress. It earned over $US60 million ($NZ85.2 million) worldwide on a production cost of around $US8 million. Theron won an Oscar.

Like Theron, Cheadle is well-respected in the industry. But also like Theron, the 40-year-old Cheadle is far less known to mass movie audiences.

For the most part, he has been seen in art-house films such as the upcoming The Assassination of Richard Nixon or The United States of Leland. On Assassination, Cheadle jokes, he "made $US1.50 and had to bring his own clothes" for wardrobe.

Outside low-budget films, most of his work in major films like Ocean's 12 has been confined to supporting roles.

Picking roles, he said, is "sometimes about the project, and my character is not that big in it or that important ... but it's almost always about hoping you can do something with the part and the part can do something for you".

Normally in the background, Cheadle is now at the forefront of Hotel Rwanda. Co-stars Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix play minor roles and relative unknown Sophie Okonedo is Rusesabagina's wife, Tatiana.

Cheadle calls the movie "ultimately an uplifting" experience and said audiences will be "educated about some facts in the world that you should know about it".

In spring 1994, Rwanda plunged into a civil war between rival Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Extremist Hutus tried to rid the nation of Tutsis by killing them. When the genocide ended in the summer, nearly one million people had been murdered.

Rusesabagina managed an upmarket hotel in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, and when the killing began, refugees overran it. Hutu guerrillas demanded he get the Tutsis out, but Rusesabagina cajoled his old army contacts in a way that ultimately saved lives.

Rusesabagina said in a telephone interview that he does not see himself as a hero, but rather a normal person who simply did what he had to do. Watching Hotel Rwanda, he said, awakens old demons.

"It appears as if it was happening today and sounds are always fresh in my mind," Rusesabagina said from his home in Brussels, Belgium.

Cheadle said there were elements of the hotel manager's personality with which he could identify. Cheadle called him diplomatic, driven to help people and committed to family.

For his part, Rusesabagina said Cheadle's portrayal of him was spot on. "He is someone who can disappear into someone else's character," Rusesabagina said.

Hotel Rwanda begs comparison to 1993 Steven Spielberg movie Schindler's List, which told of the German factory owner Oskar Schindler's sheltering of Jews from the Holocaust.

But Rusesabagina's tale has special significance this year with the current fighting in the Darfur region of western Sudan which has led to tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of some 1.6 million people over two years.

In Rwanda, critics charge, much of the world looked the other way while murder took place, just as the conflict in Darfur, an area the size of France, has been overshadowed by the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Cheadle said he has been inspired by Rusesabagina's story to speak out about the plight of refugees in Darfur, and he had plans to meet US congressional leaders about the issue.

He is often asked if he is concerned that audiences may feel guilty after seeing Hotel Rwanda.

"I don't mind, if it is a jumping point into the next question, 'what can I do?' As long as that question is not answered by an apathetic, 'I can't do anything about it'," Cheadle said.

Hotel Rwanda debuted in New York and Los Angeles last week and opens elsewhere in the United States and the world in January.

- REUTERS