All things considered,
I judge it's best, shortly before sitting down to meet Idris Elba in the
designated interview space in a central London hotel, to get the Bond business
out of the way first.
Despite the fact that
only two minutes earlier I was informed by Elba’s publicist that the Luther
star is fed up being asked about whether he’ll be the next 007, given that
Daniel Craig, four films to the good, appeared to be retiring. Rumours of
Elba’s possible casting have created a certain amount of controversy.
To recap: former 007
Sir Roger Moore said that Elba would not be an appropriate choice because Bond
needed to be played by someone who was, “English-English”. Following that,
Anthony Horowitz, author of one of the ongoing series of James Bond
“continuation novels”, opined that Elba was “too street” for the part.
Both comments were
taken to be making oblique reference to Elba’s ethnicity. Moore and Horowitz,
to their credit, swiftly apologised for any offence their remarks may have
caused. Elba, to his greater credit, maintained a dignified silence on the
matter.
Which, I discover, he
continues to do. “I’m guessing,” I say, once we have both made ourselves
comfortable, “that you don’t want to talk about Bond?”
“Why would I talk about
Bond?” he asks. “I’m not even in it.”
Which, by way of an
inadequate response, has the merit of being uninformative, yet true as far as
it goes, and above all, classy.
Tittle-tattle thus
dealt with, I can report that Elba is nothing much like either of the two
characters he is thus far in his career best known for portraying. He is, in
other words, a proper actor, capable of convincingly pretending to be someone
else as opposed to just looking good as himself on camera.
The first of those
characters, from the cult US drama The Wire, was called Stringer Bell [below],
an ambitious, doomed drug dealer in Baltimore, USA. The second, a lot closer to
home, is DCI John Luther, a London detective who’s borderline bonkers, burdened
with guilt, grief and the woes of the world.
Both men are brooding,
laconic, physically intimidating. Elba, however, while thoughtful and
reflective, comes across as a man who, at 43, has conquered any demons of
aggression or self-hatred. You wouldn’t much want to hang out with John Luther
for long – and you certainly wouldn’t want to hang out with Stringer Bell for
any time at all. Hanging out with Idris Elba, though? I reckon that could be
rewarding, fun, exciting – and not even a little bit injurious to personal
health, psychological or physical.
Not that his journey
has always been easy. "I overindulged in things at times," he says,
cockney accent still very pronounced after many years of living mostly in the
US. "There were moments when if I'd gone too far I would not be
here."
But he didn’t go too
far? “No. I stopped. A lot of it was understanding yourself, your value. And
that’s hard because ‘I value myself ’ feels like an egotistical thing. But when
I realised ‘I’m good at that, I’m decent at that, I’m not a horrible person’, I
got on with it.”
By getting on with it,
he means his career, as opposed to any behaviour that might have sidetracked
his progress. A Londoner, growing up first in Hackney’s ill-famed Holly Street
estate, and then later further east in Newham, his parents working a variety of
hard, poorly paid jobs, Elba’s start in life was not auspicious. Not economically
or socially, at any rate.
“Holly Street had a
great vibe, but yeah, it was rough. I got run over once and they drove off.”
Culturally and morally, however, his childhood was excellent preparation for
making his way.
“I stayed out of
trouble, on the straight and narrow. My parents were really protective. They
wouldn’t let me out too much, didn’t let me into that space.” His father was
originally from Sierra Leone, his mother from Ghana, and both shared a
typically strict, aspirational West African attitude to parenthood.
“They were rules upon
rules – ‘Big people are talking, you shouldn’t be speaking’. Or, ‘You can’t do
that, you don’t wanna be like them boys.’”
It has served him well,
though? “Oh yeah,” Elba agrees. “People go, ‘Oh you really work hard!’ I say my
mum and dad both had a couple of jobs. The work ethic was big. You work hard
and pay your bills and all that.”
Elba imbibed the
discipline, but then found himself applying it in a field his mum and dad
didn’t really understand. “My reports from school came back saying, ‘He’s doing
well in drama’ and they were, ‘What about maths?’” He chuckles at the memory.
His mum is still alive. His dad died a few years ago.
An only child, the
teenage Elba found that acting was the natural outlet for a vivid imagination.
“As an only child, you make up your own toys, make up your own language, make
up your own friends. It just felt incredible to be able to do it in a
control-free, liberating environment: drama. Everyone at our school loved drama
anyway because of Miss McPhee. She was lovely.” Although it was a tough,
all-boys school in what he calls “a concrete jungle”,he never got any hassle
for his passion. “I was a big lad. In all the sports teams. So it was, ‘Yeah,
drama’s cool’.”
And for Elba, it was.
“I was working straight out of college. By the time I was 23 I’d clocked up a
few good credits, telly, a bit of theatre, but I was still aiming for something
bigger, and New York beckoned.
I didn’t have a real
plan of how I was gonna smash into New York, but I just knew I wanted to. I had
a love affair with New York. I kept going out there, every six weeks if I could
make it.” And did what? “Shop mainly,” he laughs. “So I could come back to
London looking cool. I loved it there. I felt it was super-liberated, very
different to London.”
Had being a black actor
been a problem in London, in terms of going for parts and not getting them?
“No. You can labour things like that. If you ignore it, other people ignore it
too. And as long as you’re good at whatever it is you’re trying to do, people
don’t see your colour. You’ve just got to be good at it. I’ve been misquoted
about having to go to America because of not getting roles. I was working, but
I definitely saw a ceiling. It’s a smaller pot here.”
His breakthrough, aged
around 30, came with The Wire, the assured HBO urban saga of various groups
surviving and interacting in post-industrial Baltimore. That series proved
hugely beneficial for him professionally, less so personally. He got parts in
big movies – some of them challenging and rewarding, others less so, other than
financially.
“I was working
constantly. As I grew up, as I got older, you know, life matters! I found that
I missed my culture, my family. An actor who works all the time and is always
in his characters, you just lose your roots. Your parts become better, your
acting becomes better because you’re always working on your craft, but you
stifle your growth as a person. I was in danger of doing that post-The Wire.
Luther saved my life. I read John Luther, this formidable, unstable presence.
Dark, but entertaining, not typically British telly at all. I was, ‘I’ll have
some of that’. In England. Working in my own accent.”
While still visiting
America a lot — he has, or has had, homes in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and
Atlanta, where his daughter Isan, 13, lives with her mother, Elba is now for
the most part back in Britain. Where’s home now? “A caravan in south London.”
He laughs. “Well, not a caravan. A bungalow. It’s a pit stop.” He also has an
office in north London. And another home in Brittany. And a second child,
two-year-old son, Winston. Beyond that, he politely declines to talk about his
private life. “I do have a quirky existence. It’s not ideal. I move around.”
That moving around has
recently taken in voicing Shere Khan for the animation Jungle Book, out next
year, plus a part in the next Star Trek instalment, and action movie Bastille
Day. Busy boy. “I used to dread turning 40, I loved my youth. Now I’m trying to
be a lot more honest with myself. I’ve learned to compartmentalise things, like
anger, and fear. They’re both useless, really... I think I’m doing all right.”
By Sarah Dunn
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