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(David L. Ryan/Globe Staff) |
Archive | Sunday , August 22 , 2010
Boston Globe Article: British Actor Idris Elba Talks About His Acting Career, Hollywood, & England.
Prepare to be disarmed
Idris Elba is versatile, British (who knew?), and yes — the sexiest man alive
By Wesley Morris Globe Staff / August 22, 2010
Every winter, People magazine releases its catalog of desire and fantasy also known as the Sexiest Man Alive edition. It’s the usual assortment of bedroom eyes and unbuttoned shirts. The editors pick a big winner, and staring at the recent covers — Jackman, Damon, Clooney, Pitt, Law . . . Clooney — you start to wonder: Have they met Idris Elba?
Elba is an actor who works in a low, smoldering register. His appeal is a kind of classical masculine strength. Not many smiles, not a lot of tears. He’s tall and unreasonably handsome. He looks good in a suit, and, when a movie allows, out of one. If you like accents, his — to the great shock of those who know his Baltimore drug kingpin from “The Wire’’ or the lustily pursued executive he played in “Obsessed’’ — is British. He also has two arms of tattoos and a side career as a DJ called Big Driis. He also raps under the nom de mike King Driis.
This is all to say that People’s idea of sexy might be too narrowly clean-cut to include Elba. He once was one of People’s 100 Most Beautiful, which, of course, is not the same. Elba’s version of sexy inspires actual ideas of sex. Say his name to a woman who knows him or identify one of his roles (the lovelorn car mechanic in Tyler Perry’s “Daddy’s Little Girls,’’ for instance) and she’ll clasp her hand to her chest and pretend to pass out. She’ll start to fan herself, maybe with one of the Essence magazines that’s had him on the cover. In Boston, a couple of stupendously unscientific polls (some nurses on the Orange Line, a woman with a stack of Jet magazines at a Starbucks) ranked Elba ahead of former Sexiest Men Alive, including 1996’s winner, Denzel Washington, the actor who flamboyantly shot Elba dead in “American Gangster.’’
One morning a few weeks ago was probably not the most ideal day for People — or people — to meet him. He made his way around an expensive downtown hotel in a white T-shirt, red flip-flops, jeans, and a newsboy cap. He smelled softly of soap. This was probably sexy, but not in the way of magazine covers. More than anything, it was alarmingly normal. He was awake but looked like he could have gone back to bed. His face said, “You should have seen me last night. Last night, it was on.’’
Elba strolled into the theater in jeans and a plaid shirt. Two girls in the front row of the stadium seating went wild. He apologized for the wait and implored people to promote the film, apparently by any means necessary: “Say it was the greatest movie you ever saw.’’ Overselling his performance came next: “I’m fantastic in the movie.’’ (He’s been better.) This side of Elba was interesting. He held the microphone close to his mouth the way he would if he were behind a turntable, commanding a crowded nightclub to make some noise. His hyperbole was standard hip-hop, and the audience went for it, even the woman in a motorized wheelchair who, before Elba arrived, seemed miffed about the holdup. It was a minor triumph: another crowd disarmed.
Wherever he went to celebrate that evening had caught up with him the next day. Elba appears to be a night creature, not necessarily a morning person, but he gradually began to part the clouds of his grogginess. After five minutes, he was closer to the DJ who charmed a roomful of strangers 15 hours before. Yet it’s hard to reconcile the various Elbas.
There’s the English gentleman in flip-flops, sipping tea in a hotel conference room; the actor who gave a truly great pensive performance as Stringer Bell in three seasons of “The Wire’’; the fellow who managed to work Beyoncé and Ali Larter into a killer lather in “Obsessed; the actor who appears to have made the same so-so action-thriller twice in one year — “Takers’’ is only loosely distinguishable from “The Losers’’ — and the guy who shot a music video for a song called “Hold On,’’ as King Driis. Elba also just starred in a hit six-episode BBC detective series called “Luther.’’ He has a role as the man Laura Linney’s sleeping with on her new Showtime series, “The Big C.’’ He could resume his guest stint on “The Office’’ and has a role in next summer’s “Thor.’’ But does he have a business manager?
“Here’s the thing,’’ he said, “I don’t think as a businessman, and I should. I think as an artist. ‘Oh, I feel like making a painting today,’ and I’ll go off and make a painting. Now I’m getting asked about my music a lot more. I guess I’m a little more vocal with my music. I’d been making tracks, putting out songs here and there for a long time under many different guises. I realize now I’m too old to be just Big Driis the rapper’’ — Elba is 38. “The truth is that when I’m making music I can honestly be me.’’
He stops for a few seconds and thinks. “But eventually there has to be some synergy. There will be synergy.’’ He then explained that he loves Bollywood movies and sees that genre as a way to merge storytelling and music. “I do silly little music videos here and there, but the next set of music videos are going to be more like films, with music as dialogue. The reason I don’t push my music is ’cause I don’t want people to pay that much attention yet.’’ He’s well aware of the stigma of singing actors and wants to avoid it.
But over-diversification is currently an actorly affliction. They’re spread thin, and there’s no apparent unifying principle to the wealth of projects. The poster child for this syndrome is James Franco, whose multitasking seems like a kind of performance art. Elba isn’t nearly as overcommitted. Still, with each of these public projects it becomes harder to tell which ones matter most to the artist and subsequently to us. In Elba’s case, it isn’t a question of whether acting hurts his rapping or the other way around, but whether doing both forces an audience to reconcile who he is.
This is something Will Smith, Queen Latifah, Ice Cube, and Mark Wahlberg have worked out, and for the most part their movie careers won. A singing actor is one thing, an actor who raps is something else, since hip-hop, even in its current diminished state, is still about some kind of authenticity. The only reason Jamie Foxx, who practices a kind of hip-hop R&B, is barely getting away with a music career is because it’s still unclear whether he’s for real. And, as with Franco, you start to wonder about the movie work, too.
With Elba, it’s the music that seems like a lark. In the video for “Hold On,’’ his affable personal assistant Hanif plays King Driis’s hammy right-hand man, while his boss dances in front of the camera, rapping. It’s an amusing clip, but, as Elba admits, not great. It’s also confusing. If you can be Stringer Bell, why would you want to be King Driis, too?
If you ever happen to see Elba on the street, tell him you liked him on “The Office.’’ You might make his day. He played Charles Miner, a senior executive at the Dunder Mifflin paper company, and he says he loved the seven episodes he did. “Even though my character was kind of a deadpan guy, I felt funny.’’ In a show jammed with class clowns, the straight man actually is funny.
“That acting is bigger than I like to do,’’ Elba said. “I’m usually rigid and the whole thing. You’re containing huge amounts of laughter, and the crew would walk around you. It’s like you’re not even acting. Then Steve Carell will improvise something stupid and funny and you have to look to the camera and go’’ — he makes a long, serious face that lasts for about five seconds.
After “The Wire’’ and “Luther,’’ which comes to BBC America in the fall, “The Office’’ is the best thing he’s done so far. The key to his success was the office itself. It’s a cramped, overpopulated space, and watching Elba stand up and stalk through it is unexpectedly hilarious. The physical disparity between him and the show’s band of nincompoops mirrors the intellectual difference between them. He’s in Lilliput.
“In the end,’’ Elba said of Charles, “he got exposed as not being as tough as he wanted to be. He was more of a teacher’s pet.’’ Elba found the reversal subversive. “I liked it because black men, we’re always too cool. And it doesn’t mean that because you’re goofy or funny you’re a sellout. John Krasinski’s character, Jim, lived in fear of me the whole time, but now it’s a different ballgame, isn’t it?’’
What was also exciting about Elba on “The Office’’ is that you can see its practical use for movies. There’s a real classic screwball quality to Charles Miner. You can well imagine an entire string of films with him in a suit and spectacles, sparring with someone tougher and prettier than Carell. You can see him going down a more serious Hollywood road. But partially as a consequence of race, partially as a matter of lack of risk, the material for a breakthrough isn’t there at the moment.
“It’s coming. It’s a question of time and taste, but it’s coming,’’ Elba said. “I’ve always been able to beat the casting criteria. Always. It’s a combination of me being who I am, and my agents sort of pushing for it.’’
He sounds persuasive. But can he keep up this pace — the acting, music, the videos? He says he wants to take some time away from the press and just figure things out for himself. As he says it, he looks as serious and solemn as Stringer Bell. Elba has a real shot at a major career. He’d still be sexy without it. But he’s rooting for himself as much as strangers are rooting for him. Like all Sexiest Men Alive (official and otherwise), he knows sexy isn’t enough.
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