Idris Elba

Idris Elba, who was born in London and raised by his Sierra Leonean father and Ghanaian mother, has always embraced acting and mixing audios. Elba dropped out of school in 1988 to join the National Youth Music Theatre. During his teenage years, he worked as a DJ in nightclubs, and in his early twenties, he began auditioning for television roles. He went to the United States in pursuit of lead roles, claiming that “there are lead roles for black actors” that he couldn’t secure in the UK. Crimewatch, The Wire, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and Avengers: Age of Ultron are just a few of the shows and movies in which Idris has appeared. Elba has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film four times, winning one, and has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award five times. Idris has also collaborated with musicians such as Jay-Z, Mumford & Sons, Wiley, and Taylor Swift.  Elba presented the BBC Radio 2 series Journey Dot Africa with Idris Elba in October 2014, which explored various forms of African music. In additionally, he spoke before the UK Parliament on the lack of diversity on screen in terms of race, gender, and sexuality. Idris Elba, as a member of the BFI Board of Governors, spoke on the challenges he encountered early in his career, citing a lack of varied opportunities for minorities and stereotyped typecasting as issues the industry still needed to address. Elba cooperated with the UK Parliament in their attempts to eradicate Ebola from West Africa, among other initiatives. Idris Elba is reported to be co-creating an Afrofuturist anime series with his wife that will “ultimately explore equality and kinship within a corrupt society.“