Many modern control systems become gradually more complicated and, consequently, the approach to control design approaches is both difficulty and complex. Moreover, if such a complex interconnected system is subjected to non-smooth nonlinearities in the actuator, then unexpected difficulties, degradation or, even worse, instability will arise in the system performance. Therefore, a new decentralized sliding mode control (DSMC) approach for such a class of complex interconnected systems subjected to non-smooth (deadzone) nonlinearities is proposed in this paper. Based on sliding mode control (SMC) theory, the proposed DSMC laws guarantee the global reaching condition of the sliding mode in uncertain complex interconnected systems with deadzone nonlinearities, that is, they can ensure that the sliding mode is reached in finite time and with prescribed transient behavior. In the sliding mode, the investigated uncertain complex interconnected system with deadzone nonlinearities in the actuator still are insensitive to system uncertainties and external disturbances. The proposed DSMC laws can work effectively for uncertain complex interconnected systems either with or without deadzone nonlinearities in the actuator. However, this cannot be guaranteed by the traditional DSMC design for systems without input deadzone nonlinearities. Furthermore, the sliding motion can be controlled to converge within a specified exponential speed. Finally, two illustrative examples with a series of computer simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DSMC laws.