On a crisp December evening, Idris Elba rescued a group of men—from embarrassment. The night had taken a turn for the worse for the young chaps after they were denied entry to a hot London club. But Elba happened to be walking by the venue, where he and his friends are regulars, and chatted with the manager to get the group in, even offering to buy them a table. The incident went viral on TikTok. Elba laughs, thinking about it now. “This guy appealed to me because I was him,” he says over a Zoom call in early January. “I was definitely that guy being turned away just because I’m slightly bigger and I don’t fit the criteria of the club.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone turning away Elba, whose charismatic talent and suave demeanor have helped him become a global superstar. But a lot of work and thought have gone into getting to this point, and, with the actor about to celebrate his 50th birthday in September, he seems to have reached a place where all he wants to do is keep surprising people. This refusal to stay within any one box has allowed Elba to star in nearly all of Hollywood’s biggest franchises—Avengers, Fast & Furious, The Suicide Squad—while also delivering deep character work with The Wire, Beasts of No Nation, and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Last year, he played a grizzled tough guy in the revisionist Western The Harder They Fall. And right now he’s in London shooting Netflix’s first Luther movie, based on the hit TV series that has earned him four Emmy nominations since he took on the role of the troubled detective in 2010. Making a film version in this shadowy world was always high on his bucket list, and he hopes for more. “For those that like the exploration of the dark side of human beings, it’s well done, it’s well written,” Elba says.
Coming up, he’ll appear in two movies that couldn’t be more different: George Miller’s fantasy feature Three Thousand Years of Longing, opposite Tilda Swinton, and Beast, a survival thriller in which he plays a father being pursued by a lion. “Having a year of films that are all very different excites me,” he says. “I don’t want people to be like, ‘Oh, this is an Idris Elba film, so I’m going to expect that.’… I feel very privileged to be considered an actor that has a lot of range.”
As if that weren’t enough, you’ll hear him as Knuckles, the blue guy’s new adversary in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, out in April. Sonic was an opportunity Elba couldn’t pass up because the self-proclaimed gamer grew up on that type of entertainment. “I got weak in the knees, literally,” he says of the offer, adding that it also earns him bonus points with his seven-year-old son. “He’s just coming into his own and likes to hear his old man in some of these animations. I love that.” But even in cartoon form, the actor can’t escape one of his signature traits, it seems. When the first trailer revealed his character, headlines proclaimed that Knuckles was now officially sexy, thanks to Elba’s baritone. “I don’t know, man. It’s really hard for me because when I listen to my voice, I don’t hear that,” he says with a chuckle. “I just hear my accent or my soft r’s, whatever imperfections I’ve got in my voice.”
That voice is also paving the way to a second career, with Elba DJ’ing and collaborating with the likes of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Australian indie-pop group Lime Cordiale. Much more than a quirky side hobby, music is a passion (he performed at Coachella in 2019) that Elba hopes a wider audience will take as seriously as they do his onscreen work. “Some may think, Well, it will be the death of your acting if your music’s shit,” he says. “I’ve dealt with the internal struggle of that over the years. So now I’m at peace and I’ve chosen: This is what I’m doing, and I’m going to do it. Some will love it and some will hate it.”
That slurry of confidence, passion, and embrace of the unknown feels like leading man energy—however much he plans to “lean away from the acting work” over the coming years to focus more on music. “The thing about making music is it’s a very consuming process,” he says. “It’s very difficult to shoot a movie and then go off into the studio or make a song. It’s like trying to build a soufflé while making a brick wall.” He’s also directing more attention toward his production company, Green Door Pictures, which he founded in 2013. He admits that it got off to a slow start, but the past few years have seen a fresh wave of momentum, including a first-look deal with Apple. It’s part of his ongoing mission to support new talent—opening the door for those who may need Idris Elba to get them past the bouncers of Hollywood.
This story has been updated.
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