Photo: Mark Squires
It was not long after Stringer Bell was cornered and shot down by Omar Little and Brother Mouzone on HBO’s brilliantly written series The Wire that the 36-year-old actor Idris Elba was reborn as a film star.
The handsome and charming Brit expat has since shared the big screen with Denzel Washington, Hilary Swank, Gabrielle Union, Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman, to name a few. The range of characters he selects is so diverse you’d think Elba was showing off.
In the past three years alone he has played an exorcist in The Unborn, a small-time London crook in RocknRolla, a detective in the Prom Night remake, a sinister bone collector from Botswana in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, a religious scientist in The Reaping, a Harlem hustler in American Gangster and a zombie-killing general in 28 Weeks Later. And if he were showing off, could you blame him?
“What you’ll notice about my work is I’m not the lead all the time,” Elba explains, his booming voice flooded with confidence. “Leading roles are typically a regurgitation of the same old characters. For me, it’s more exciting to play a totally different character in smaller part and extend my palette.” – STEVEN PSYLLOS
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