Idris Elba Talks About His Long Walk to Stardom

Four years ago, after Idris Elba and the editor of EM had lunch for the first time, they were approaching the valet stand, and one of the attendants asked for his name. The editor quickly cracked, “You don’t know who this is?” And Elba hung his head a bit and humbly laughed. “No! No one knows who I am! He doesn’t know me!”

Even back then, his career was heating up something fierce. He’d come off of a successful run of HBO’s big hit The Wire and was preparing to co-star in an arc for NBC’s The Office. But he was right. In a way. His star was only beginning to rise, and mainstream America had yet to peg him as a ridiculously good-looking, chocolate-dipped version of George Clooney.

But now? The Brit is the new pitchman for Toyota Avalon, has a hit BBC show Luther, co-stars in blockbusters like Thor, graces many A-magazine covers… and it’s being whispered that he’ll earn an Academy Award nomination for his work in Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, the gripping Nelson Mandela biopic opening later this month that has everyone talking about his portrayal of perhaps one of the greatest human beings ever.
Surely, that valet attendant knows his name now.

EM: This is quite the moment for you. Is it surreal that everything is hitting all at once?
Idris Elba:

I haven’t had the time to really have my feet on the ground, to be honest with you. You know one of those situations where you’re just working and working? I was a student of drama and performing arts. I did it in two years, and all I did was work then. I just completely forgot where I was. My clothes changed because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was wearing. My friends were like, ‘Where are you, man? Who are you? What’s going on?’ Literally, my feet haven’t touched the ground.

EM: The Toyota campaign was huge. And seeing those commercials naturally made us think, ‘OK, he’s going to be James Bond.’ Why was this the right endorsement deal for you?
IE:

I have an old history with the advertising agency. We’ve been trying to build a relationship for a long time. It’s one of those things that I wanted when I wasn’t really in the public eye like that, and it just came off exactly at a time when I wanted to do a commercial like that.