Idris Elba Quotes

Waking up in TRUTH is so much better than living in a lie.

What an honor it was to step into the shoes of Nelson Mandela and portray a man who defied odds, broke down barriers, and championed human rights before the eyes of the world.

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'm an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it's just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I'm still on it and I won't stand still.

I'm never shaken or stirred.

My Father always told me that a fool at 40 is a fool for life.

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 was always a real athletic kid. Then when I got older, I just figured it was part of life to keep training.

I've been DJing mostly, and most DJs end up producing. That's just me.

The less I talk about being black, the better.

As much as it's nice to step into that massive world of Hollywood and be a big, famous actor, I prefer the career of actors that have really chosen smartly and done really amazing performances. Maybe they're not as known, but their careers are a bit more interesting.

The one album I can't live without is called 'Cumbolo' by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there's one in particular called 'This Train.' I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.

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 knew that if I wanted to be all I could be, I would have to go to the US. It took three years to get the accent right.

I've got two smoking guns that just look incredible, and I love to pull them out whenever I can.

The only thing I change mainly is my sneakers. I love sneakers. But everything's sort of black or jeans. Jeans, always.

I love working. I'm a workaholic and I'm really privileged for some of the jobs I get offered and so I just want to keep going.

Even when I went to America I didn't work for four years. It wasn't like I came to New York and it was the land of milk and honey. It was just as much of a hard graft. But there's a lot more opportunity nowadays across the board for actors, no matter what color you are, with the Internet and small productions.

In 'Pacific Rim' I had to have a haircut I wouldn't usually rock. However, the moustache I had in the film - that might have to come out again. It was a good moustache. Good times.

I come from an era, in my world, where you just had to define yourself as who you are and what you do. I happen to be an actor. I happen to be someone that loves to act, that also likes music, that also likes to speak, and that also has an opinion.

[Sometimes] I sit in front of my [gaming] console with my headphones on and I play. I love that. It's a nice form of escapism.

The audience loves it when you pay attention to details.

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 love to play different roles. That's just the kind of actor I am.

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 English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.

What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.

What kind of role do you play after someone like Stringer, you know what I mean? You play another gangster. What’s the point of that? I’ve played the gangster. I try to keep it really varied; it just makes for more of a fun and interesting career.

If I was gonna go to jail, I don't want to go to jail for stealing a bottle of water. I'll steal that $20 million. At least then it was worth it.

The adrenaline feeling of jumping out of cliffs and bikes and all of that is very specific to the film. In 'Pac Rim' I'm not doing that so much. There isn't that touch stonework for me in it, but there is a lot of action.

Working at BBC, at the head of one of the top dramas, is a tradition for great actors.

Africans, we hold on to our youths and whip them into shape.

As an actor, you're trained to do the right thing, be politically correct, say your lines, say the right thing about the people you're working with...

When you come from an under-privileged background, oftentimes, you feel a little overwhelmed by your education or your lack of.

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.

We're all human beings. Experience is experience, let's just be honest. Let's not try and dissect suffering into a race, or whatever you want to call it. We're all human beings, one way or another. All races have gone through times that are challenging; that's part of being a human.

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.

In some countries, no one knows who Idris Elba is.

My definition of bad-ass is that I'm a force of nature and true spirit. I'm self-admitting that, and it sounds vain to say that, but I am.

There's a fast-track if you can do the networking. For some personalities it works, but for mine it doesn't.

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.

I've never had to explain Prometheus to people, ever. Most people get it.

I dont have a place that I call home at the moment because theres no point. I mean, Im a traveling circus for a while. Its weird. Like, if I wanted to go home, theres nowhere to go. I just go to a hotel. But Ive kind of gotten used to it.

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?

There are things that I really find important, and that we need to remind ourselves of. When you think about disability, do you really think about it? Someone who's a full-time trainer or a boxer, someone who's got a major disability, but who doesn't let that get in his way, that's a really good message for someone who is able-bodied. It can make them think, 'Wow, I suppose I could be doing better for myself.'

It's actually quite criminal how 'The Wire' was systematically ignored.

It's weird because my parents don't really understand my business. I get fan mail all day long, but if a piece happens to get to their house, they're like, 'Oh, my God, you've got a fan! You have to write them back. You have to do it!

It could be Grammy night, Oscar night, whatever - I don't feel the pressure to be there.

I get criticized for taking roles in films like Ghost Rider 2, but if you look at my résumé, dude, I've mixed it up as much as I can.

Are there differences between black actors’ opportunities and white actors’ opportunities? Yes, there are. It’s been said.