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'm rebelling against being handed a career, like, 'You're the next this; you're the next that.' I'm not the next anything, I'm the first me. I can't be myself, I can't just be Idris Elba. But that's just the nature of the business.
My Father always told me that a fool at 40 is a fool for life.
I’m never shaken or stirred.
I was always a real athletic kid. Then when I got older, I just figured it was part of life to keep training.
I'm an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it's just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I'm still on it and I won't stand still.
What an honor it was to step into the shoes of Nelson Mandela and portray a man who defied odds, broke down barriers, and championed human rights before the eyes of the world.
Waking up in TRUTH is so much better than living in a lie.
The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.
Twenty or 30 years from now, I'm going to be on a beach in Jamaica.
When I was a kid, I thought it was tough.
As an actor, you're trained to do the right thing, be politically correct, say your lines, say the right thing about the people you're working with.
I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.