Idris Elba quotes
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“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.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "Harvey Weinstein and Idris Elba React to Nelson Mandela’s Passing". www.indiewire.com. December 5, 2013.
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“Television, for me, is a medium that I'm probably always going to be attached to, one way or another.”
-- Idris Elba -
“Waking up in TRUTH is so much better than living in a lie.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : Twitter post from Nov 11, 2011
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“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.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "Idris Elba Talks LUTHER Season 3, Luther’s New Love Interest and His Relationship with Alice, Exploring a Prequel Story, and Future Seasons". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. August 28, 2013.
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“I was in The Wire for three years, and I left at the highlight of that.”
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“The less I talk about being black, the better.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "From Space to South Africa: Idris Elba on Prometheus and Playing Mandela". Interview with Jada Yuan, www.vulture.com. May 27, 2012.
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“Working at BBC, at the head of one of the top dramas, is a tradition for great actors.”
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“My Father always told me that a fool at 40 is a fool for life.”
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“People watch three or four episodes at a time of their shows.”
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“In some countries, no one knows who Idris Elba is.”
-- Idris Elba -
“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“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.”
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“I would never be fearful of any character.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : FaceBook post by Idris Elba from Feb 08, 2012
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“I wasn't bad at school, but I was never a bookworm.”
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“I've been DJing mostly, and most DJs end up producing. That's just me.”
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“I've never had to explain 'Prometheus' to people, ever. Most people get it.”
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“It's actually quite criminal how 'The Wire' was systematically ignored.”
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“The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.”
-- Idris Elba -
“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.”
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“I was into Spider Man when I was a kid and that was the only comic I've ever read.”
-- Idris Elba -
“I was always a real athletic kid. Then when I got older, I just figured it was part of life to keep training.”
-- Idris Elba -
“I'm a little sheepish about it. Whenever I meet fans and they're like, 'Oh, you're so sexy,' I just don't get that. There's no way one man can be universally sexy.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“Africans, we hold on to our youths and whip them into shape.”
-- Idris Elba -
“Are there differences between black actors' opportunities and white actors' opportunities? Yes, there are. It's been said.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "From Space to South Africa: Idris Elba on Prometheus and Playing Mandela". Interview with Jada Yuan, www.vulture.com. May 27, 2012.
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“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.”
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“Every leading lady I work with, I'll see if I can get a song out of them and put it on an album.”
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“Every single film I've done, it's about the character.”
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“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.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : FaceBook post by Idris Elba from Oct 19, 2012
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“I did a rendition of 'Billie Jean' which is on my Soundcloud. I put it on Twitter, and it got about 3000 hits that day.”
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“I don't get recognised that much yet in London, but when I do I get a real sense of achievement.”
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“I get criticized for taking roles in films like 'Ghost Rider 2', but if you look at my resume, dude, I've mixed it up as much as I can.”
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“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“I love to play different roles. That's just the kind of actor I am.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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“I knew that if I wanted to be all I could be, I would have to go to the U.S. It took three years to get the accent right.”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "The Midas touch". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. May 4, 2009.
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“I've always been DJing; it's just I'm making more of a push for it, making it more public.”
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“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.”
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“It could be Grammy night, Oscar night, whatever - I don't feel the pressure to be there.”
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“The only thing I change mainly is my sneakers. I love sneakers. But everything's sort of black or jeans. Jeans, always.”
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“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!”
-- Idris Elba -
“I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“I'm not interested in making all-black films - I come from a very diverse culture; I want to work with every type of person. I work a lot with women executives because they seem to be a lot more open minded about that and a lot more progressive in that way.”
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“I was on a well-beaten path of actors - what we all call 'the Law and Order route'. I spent two years of auditioning for everything... and then 'The Wire' came up.”
-- Idris Elba -
“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
“There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?”
-- Idris Elba -
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“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
“Apparently, Daniel Craig said I'd be a great Bond. Daniel, why did you say that? Dropped me right in it! What an honor it would be, but also, what an indication of change.”
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“Because I was big, I didn't have to listen to anyone doubting me. I was just considered good at football or whatever, there were no questions about it.”
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“Bond? It is a bit like saying, 'Do you want to play Superman?' Anyone would dream of it. It's one of the most coveted roles in film. I'd be honoured. But I don't know if it will actually happen. I'm just happy with the idea of being associated with it. It's nice there's a lot of good will.”
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“I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture.”
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“I think 'The Wire' really is relatable. It reflects an ongoing issue across America, about inaccuracies in major cities between rich and the poor and some of the things that go on behind the red tape of council and government bodies.”
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“I think there's a tendency for actors like myself, and I don't mean to generalize myself, but I've played 'men's men,' if you will, characters that are simmering rage and calculated. There's a trend not to play anything that is opposed to that.”
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“You watch yourself age and it's hard to feel like a sex symbol.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“Yeah, I know, any time you hear an actor say, 'I do music', you cringe. But I want to be gradual with my music. I want to earn my stripes.”
-- Idris Elba -
“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?”
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“What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.”
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“There's a fast-track if you can do the networking. For some personalities it works, but for mine it doesn't.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“I watch my daughter wanting to be like other kids and getting upset that she's not. But I always try and instill in her the idea that she's perfect as she is.”
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“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“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.”
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“Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people – do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone’s white. That’s what we have to change”
-- Idris ElbaSource : "The god in Idris Elba". Interview with Afua Hirsch, www.theguardian.com. April 2, 2011.
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“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.”
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“There's the argument that you can relate to someone who's completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character.”
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“White actors still get way more money in Hollywood. It's been that way for a very long time. I hope it'll change, but it's a matter of forcing that change.”
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“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.”
-- Idris Elba -
“The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.”
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“The role of my agent has just been to get me in the room. If I can get in the room - say the character is just a charming man who lives next door - then I'll walk in there and be as charming as I can and they will think to themselves, 'I don't see why we can't cast him.”
-- Idris Elba -
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“When I look at my body of work, I've played a lot of characters who are morally conflicted - 'I'm right, no I'm wrong, I don't know what to do!' I want to play more characters who don't care as much, and who aren't as measured. They are what they are, no apologies.”
-- Idris Elba -
“You know, film is the ultimate goal in an actor's career. I mean, I still love TV. I have my feet firmly stamped in it. But my opportunities have been bigger and better.”
-- Idris Elba
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