He used to work night shifts, work as a bouncer or sell weed, today Idris Elba is a Hollywood star. But he doesn’t want to miss the hard times, he says – not even the three months in a van.
Idris Elba’s life has its ups and downs, led along winding paths and rarely straight ahead. Today the Englishman is an award-winning actor and a millionaire. Nevertheless, Elba is glad that he did not have immediate success in life, as he now revealed to the US magazine People.
“I’m so lucky to have the life I have now,” Elba told the magazine. »But it was also the hardest and most difficult journey. At the time I wished I could get here quicker without having to go through some of the trauma.”
Elba was born in London in 1972. His father is from Sierra Leone and his mother from Ghana . Elba discovered acting for herself while still at school. But because he didn’t earn a lot of money after school, he got by with odd jobs: he fitted tires, did telephone advertising and worked night shifts at Ford .
After his first roles on British television, Elba decided to try his luck in the USA in the 1990s. But things didn’t go smoothly in New York City from the start. Elba recently revealed on the “Jess Cagle Show” that he was looking for a job as a DJ and bouncer at a comedy club and sold grass on the side . “For about four years things went downhill very quickly,” he said. “In that time I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not proud of.”
For years he didn’t get any roles, Elba told “Playboy” in 2013. He also had to learn what homelessness means. ‘It’s been a damn hard time. I lived in a van for about three months,” he said at the time. During that time he saw the Hollywood stars Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes in films and thought: »I can do that too. I can keep up with them.«
According to his own statement, Elba was on the verge of giving up when he got a role in the series »The Wire« in 2002, which finally helped him to break through. Films like “Mandela – The Long Walk to Freedom”, “Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw” or “Thor: Day of Decision” – Elba became more and more successful. He has been nominated for a Golden Globe several times, and in 2012 he received the Best Actor award for his role in the series »Luther«. For a while, Elba was even traded as the new James Bond .
Elba is now a millionaire, married and has two children. It can be said that a lot has changed for the better for him. And that probably makes the 49-year-old happy, so he doesn’t quarrel with his past.
“I don’t think I would be as good as I am now if I hadn’t gone down this path,” he told People: “I really believe that all the things I wished for as a young man would not be the same if I had gotten them then.”