Idris Elba: How to Win at Everything!

Actor, DJ, musician and all-round righteous badass, Idris Elba makes doing everything look easy. As The Jungle Book, in which he plays tiger Shere Khan, opens in cinemas, he tells Olly Richards about the secrets to his success.

- Olly Richards

Idris Elba always knew he’d be here. Well, not here, in a conference room in a PR office in Mayfair, which is so absurdly large that it feels like we’ve arrived at a summit nobody else has bothered to attend. Here in his career. And here is on top.

Elba’s current achievements read thus: he’s the lead in a long-running detective TV show (Luther), the villain in one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters (Star Trek Beyond), a regular in the Marvel cinematic universe (as Thor’s associate Heimdall), a multi-award-winner, a DJ, an album producer, a fashion designer, a writer, a director. You’d have to write very small to get everything on his business card. To Elba, none of this is a surprise.

“I always knew I was going to do what I want,” he says, in that rumbling voice that sounds like the beginnings of a landslide. “You don’t ever imagine it will be like this,” he continues with a sweep of the hand, presumably indicating his wonderful career and not the horrible conference room, “but I always imagined I was going to be working and successful.”