White actors still get way more money in Hollywood. It's been that way for a very long time. I hope it'll change, but it's a matter of forcing that change.
— Idris Elba
I don't get recognised that much yet in London, but when I do I get a real sense of achievement.
I try to fit in workouts whenever I can.
I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture.
Every single film I've done, it's about the character.
I did a rendition of 'Billie Jean' which is on my Soundcloud. I put it on Twitter, and it got about 3000 hits that day.
I love to play different roles. That's just the kind of actor I am.
I think there's a tendency for actors like myself, and I don't mean to generalize myself, but I've played 'men's men,' if you will, characters that are simmering rage and calculated. There's a trend not to play anything that is opposed to that.
Sean Connery wasn't the Scottish James Bond and Daniel Craig wasn't the blue-eyed James Bond. So if I played him, I don't want to be called the black James Bond.
If you are going to call a film a 'black film' then you have to make a film that represents everyone that's black, which is almost impossible. That is why white films are not called white films, they are just called 'films.'
The role of my agent has just been to get me in the room. If I can get in the room - say the character is just a charming man who lives next door - then I'll walk in there and be as charming as I can and they will think to themselves, 'I don't see why we can't cast him.'
It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going, and that's a famous story, but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?
I was into Spider Man when I was a kid and that was the only comic I've ever read.
It could be Grammy night, Oscar night, whatever - I don't feel the pressure to be there.
Twenty or 30 years from now, I'm going to be on a beach in Jamaica.
The less I talk about being black, the better.
Africans, we hold on to our youths and whip them into shape.
I was on a well-beaten path of actors - what we all call 'the Law and Order route'. I spent two years of auditioning for everything... and then 'The Wire' came up.
I was always a real athletic kid. Then when I got older, I just figured it was part of life to keep training.
I did green screen for the first time! I wouldn't like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little - like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through.
Television has shied away from being too dark, because so much has happened to us recently here in the West, and people are sort of wanting to see more uplifting sorts of things.
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 still sing on bits and pieces. Singing's something that I love to do, but it's not something that I pursue as a career.
I get criticized for taking roles in films like 'Ghost Rider 2', but if you look at my resume, dude, I've mixed it up as much as I can.
There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?
Apparently, Daniel Craig said I'd be a great Bond. Daniel, why did you say that? Dropped me right in it! What an honor it would be, but also, what an indication of change.
I want to go to Sierra Leone with something - whether it's some sort of contribution to healthcare, or to the entertainment industry. My cousin is a nurse; we are talking about opening a clinic.
I've always had ambition, and the acting was successful and put my name on the map, but it was never the plan to stop there.
Now there are certain things you have to prepare - like dialect and special skills. But in the moment, interaction between two characters on the page doesn't need - for me, I don't need to prepare that.
I love bikes. I used to own one, but I fell off it when I was younger and that was the end of my bike riding days until now.
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.
Are there differences between black actors' opportunities and white actors' opportunities? Yes, there are. It's been said.
I wasn't bad at school, but I was never a bookworm.
I knew that if I wanted to be all I could be, I would have to go to the U.S. It took three years to get the accent right.
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 have one of these bodies. When I was younger, I could never put weight on, and now that I'm a little older, there's a natural sort of chubbiness coming. But honestly, if I work out for a week, it drops off in no time.
What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.
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'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 would never be fearful of any character.
I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good.
You watch yourself age and it's hard to feel like a sex symbol.
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.
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.
I tend to stay away from the comics.
There's a fast-track if you can do the networking. For some personalities it works, but for mine it doesn't.
The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.
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.
When I was a kid, I thought it was tough.
