Idris Elba has plenty of experience taking on some of the toughest roles in film. The 49-year-old actor and musician from Hackney has long proven himself as one of Britain’s greatest talents throughout his 28-year career.
Starting from humble beginnings, the actor who once acted in The Bill has gone on to portray Nelson Mandela in the 2013 movie Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and most famously DCI John Luther in the BBC crime series Luther. In his latest endeavour, Idris now brings us his latest show, Idris Elba’s Fight School, which airs for the first time on BBC Two this evening at 9pm.
But the actor who has in recent years been tipped to replace Daniel Craig as the next James Bond has had to work long and hard for his success. Before reaching the levels of fame and fortune he has achieved in his career, Idris had to overcome a long spell of unemployment and homelessness, as well as drug abuse.
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(Image: Getty Images)
In an interview with Playboy magazine in 2013, Idris said he went through a “wickedly tough time” before getting his big break in showbiz. He said: “I lived in a van for about three months. I’d had three or four years of unemployment, not getting acting jobs.
“I was watching Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes and saying, ‘I can do that. I can be right there with them.’ My (then) wife was about eight and a half months pregnant by the time I got the news I was going to be on The Wire. If I didn’t get it, I was going to leave the US.”
Idris secured his role in HBO series The Wire in 2002, starring in 37 episodes as Russell ‘Stringer’ Bell until 2004. It was his first major long-term role which provided him a solid foundation on which to build all his future successes.
The 2011 Golden Globe winner of the Best Actor award also told of abusing drugs in the past, telling the magazine: “At first I bypassed drugs. I didn’t start smoking weed until later in life. I’m not gonna lie — I’ve tried everything”.
But Idris was thankfully able to get himself out of the rut he found himself in all those years ago, and is now one of the most recognised faces on television. Yet despite his success on-screen, there is one simple facial expression the actor really struggles to pull off – he can’t wink!
(Image: Sky)
In 2014, Idris was featured in a television advert for Sky’s On Demand service. As usual, Idris was great for the vast majority of the 30-second commercial, but a quick screenshot of the ad at the 24-second mark shows the actor scrunching up his entire face where he was supposed to wink.
Dave Shaw, a reporter for the Guardian, noticed the error and described the facial expression saying the actor’s face as collapsing in a “grim simulation of a ruptured Fray Bentos pie crust, prodded with a fork”.
He continues: “His eyes crease as if someone who has recently been chopping chilies is conducting a thorough prostate exam. It’s the face that people who are afraid of children attempt to make at screaming, disconsolate infants. It’s occasionally displayed at the kiosk in Alton Towers where people collect their souvenir photos after riding Oblivion. It’s the facial expression that suicidal Muppets feign”.
Saying he has “no idea what happened to Mr Elba that prevents him from being able to wink”, the reporter then speculates: “Perhaps he missed that particular day at acting school or was traumatised by Monty Python’s Nudge Nudge sketch at a formative age.
“Whatever the reason – and we may never know the truth – we can safely say that Idris Elba is not a winker”.
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