courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Mike Terry in David Mamet’s latest film, “Redbelt,” has played many different roles on stage and in film.

Unassuming, with an easy smile and a ready laugh, Chiwetel Ejiofor is not a Hollywood superstar, though his talent may someday bring him such well-deserved celebrity. His career has been one that spans genres and character types, sometimes playing a tough guy, other times the romantic lead, and once even doing it all in heels.

A drag queen. An immigrant doctor. A police detective. A shock jock. An intergalactic agent. A pacifist cage-fighter. If anything can be said about Ejiofor's career, it is that the man has not been typecast.

In a recent interview, when asked what sorts of roles he considers and how he has managed to play so many different types of characters, the question elicited a laugh and then a thoughtful look before an answer was given.

"I think it's just the story...It's just not having a parameter that says, 'I'm not going to do this because it's something I haven't done before.' So it's just, sort of, being available to [do] anything that comes in and reading it, and if you like the story, then, you know, go with it and see what happens."

That explains the jump from the immigrant doctor ("Dirty Pretty Things") to the intergalactic mercenary with vigilante tendencies ("Serenity"). And he has even made the jump across "the pond," coming from a background on British stage and screen to make a name for himself in the States, acting in such notable American films as "American Gangster" with Denzel Washington and "Talk to Me" with Don Cheadle.

One might not even know he is not an American if all one has seen are his American films. He did not used to do accents, he said, but it is something he has picked up in the medium of film, and something about which he was very dubious when he first did them. He did not want to learn to do accents at first because he felt it was "like acting through jam, like '[he's] not in contact with what [he's] doing. [His] voice is different, how can this be real?'"

However, as with many screen actors, film acting is not his first love. Ejiofor got his start in theater, first in youth theater, then in major stage productions in West End theater (the United Kingdom equivalent of Broadway) as an adult. In February, he finished a run of Othello, playing the title role opposite Ewan McGregor (as Iago) and Kelly Riley (as Desdemona).

When comparing how it feels to act on stage versus on screen, Ejiofor said that he loves both media for their different aspects within the art of acting. Despite his love of film, he does return to the stage every once in a while to renew himself, because "[he needs] to go back. It's like medicine."