Idris Elba
Idris Elba
Idrissa Akuna "Idris" Elba, OBE is an English actor and musician. He is known for playing drug baron Russell "Stringer" Bell on the HBO series The Wire, Detective John Luther on the BBC One series Luther, and Nelson Mandela in the biographical film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. He has been nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film, winning one, and was nominated five times for a Primetime Emmy Award...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth6 September 1972
CityLondon, England
I would never be fearful of any character.
It's really funny because the same people who loved me as Stringer Bell were the same people that were watching 'Daddy's Little Girls' literally in tears.
I've never had to explain 'Prometheus' to people, ever. Most people get it.
I've been DJing mostly, and most DJs end up producing. That's just me.
I watch my daughter wanting to be like other kids and getting upset that she's not. But I always try and instill in her the idea that she's perfect as she is.
Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people – do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone’s white. That’s what we have to change
I'm tactile, very tactile. A woman who has really nice, looked-after skin is such a turn-on for me. It's always sexy.
I wasn't bad at school, but I was never a bookworm.
If you go to Africa and you're white, you're probably not going to get that much work either. But the fact is that there is a longer history of black integration in the U.S. I don't have any resentment about this: I did the maths, calculated it against my ambition and decided to leave England.
I'm not interested in making all-black films - I come from a very diverse culture; I want to work with every type of person. I work a lot with women executives because they seem to be a lot more open minded about that and a lot more progressive in that way.
The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.
It's actually quite criminal how 'The Wire' was systematically ignored.
Yeah, I know, any time you hear an actor say, 'I do music', you cringe. But I want to be gradual with my music. I want to earn my stripes.
You watch yourself age and it's hard to feel like a sex symbol.