HIGH WIRE ACT
‘I appreciate my quiet time, I really do,” Idris Elba says, “but I didn’t choose a career in quiet time.” At 48, his life seems relentlessly full of activity, projects, causes, releases. He’s the star of an imminent summer blockbuster, The Suicide Squad. He’s a rapper who releases music online at a rate of about a track a month. He hosts a podcast. He’s just released a new line of T-shirts. Earlier this year, Elba signed a deal with HarperCollins to write children’s books. He and his wife, the Canadian model Sabrina Dhowre Elba, have recently been petitioning world leaders (France’s, Belgium’s) on behalf of rural farmers in Africa. The couple have also co-designed a Louboutin sandal. When Elba sits down to chat over Zoom, it’s during a break between night shoots on a new movie he’s making, and I’m tempted to tell him to forget about it; shut the laptop; sleep.
Is he someone who hates sitting still?
“I definitely enjoy fulfilling my creative ego,” Elba answers, after some thought. He tilts or bows his head while listening to questions, answering in that low, controlled, famously splendid voice that has been well harvested, over time, for use in animated movies and advert voiceovers. “Wearing hats ” is how Elba describes his commitment to switching creative lanes, from acting to music to campaigning to whatever else. “I like figuring out how to apply my personality best,” he says. “Dialling-up and dialling-in. That’s an absolute happy place for me. Turns out, it’s also quite labour-intensive, y’know? I can sit still. I can enjoy sitting still. I just have a drive that, though I can’t explain exactly where it comes from, is always there.”
Ever since he first broke through as one of the stars of HBO’s The Wire, back the former nodding to his youth in 80s London and the latter to a life spent moonlighting as a part-time DJ.
