Idris Elba Quotes

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"I did green screen for the first time! I wouldn't like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little - like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through."

"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."

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

"I don't have a place that I call home at the moment because there's no point. I mean, I'm a traveling circus for a while. It's weird. Like, if I wanted to go home, there's nowhere to go. I just go to a hotel. But I've kind of gotten used to it."

"Television has shied away from being too dark, because so much has happened to us recently here in the West, and people are sort of wanting to see more uplifting sorts of things."

"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."

"Every single film I've done, it's about the character."

"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."

"Whether it's music or acting, that creativity all comes from the same source."

"I've always had ambition, and the acting was successful and put my name on the map, but it was never the plan to stop there."

"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?"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?"

"I would never be fearful of any character."

"I was really ambitious, so I was innovative. I was one of the first DJs to do live calls, 'cause I found this phone device that would pick up other people's voices."

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

"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."

"People expect me to be that guy. But I'm more east London boy than east Baltimore."

"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."