Idris elba film biography book
Idris Elba: So, Now What?
John Blake Publishing Ltd
© Nadia CohenAll rights reserved.
ISBN:
Contents
TITLE PAGE,DEDICATION,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS,
PROLOGUE,
CHAPTER ONE – FROM HOLLY STREET TO HOLLYWOOD,
CHAPTER TWO – STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD,
CHAPTER THREE – A ROYAL FAVOUR,
CHAPTER FOUR – CHASING CARS,
CHAPTER FIVE – A BITE OF THE BIG APPLE,
CHAPTER SIX – THE BIG BREAK,
CHAPTER SEVEN – HOLLYWOOD COMES CALLING,
CHAPTER EIGHT – LEADING MAN,
CHAPTER NINE – BLOCKBUSTERS,
CHAPTER TEN – DETECTIVE LUTHER,
CHAPTER ELEVEN – HEARTBREAK,
CHAPTER TWELVE – ME?
NELSON?,
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – BRINGING MANDELA TO LIFE,
CHAPTER FOURTEEN – TAKING IT PUBLIC,
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – DJ BIG DRIIS,
CHAPTER SIXTEEN – KING OF SPEED,
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – THE FANS,
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – THE FUTURE'S BRIGHT,
CHAPTER NINETEEN – BREAKING THROUGH CEILINGS,
FILMOGRAPHY,
PLATES,
,
CHAPTER 1
FROM HOLLY STREET TO HOLLYWOOD
Beating well-established A-list Hollywood stars to critically acclaimed roles is now something Idris Elba coolly takes in his stride, but, having grown up on a tough and rundown housing estate in East London, he leads a luxurious lifestyle he would never have even dared to dream existed.
Born Idrissa Akuna Elba in the early hours of Wednesday, 6 September , weighing in at over 10 pounds, he was to be the only child of African immigrants.
And, as dawn broke that late-summer morning, his future looked decidedly bleak. His mother Eve and father Winston had arrived in London a couple of years earlier, penniless and desperate to escape a life of poverty and hardship in West Africa.
Let Us Help You. Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. See all details. The Extraordinary Life of A.After leaving Sierra Leone, Winston was delighted to land himself a steady job at the Ford car production factory in Dagenham. He vowed to work hard and never rock the boat, for fear he might end up with nothing again. Having experienced extreme poverty, his dearest wish was that his son would follow in his footsteps and lead an equally quiet and content life, with a steady salary and no more uncertainty.
His young wife Eve, a typist who came to the UK from Ghana shortly after marrying Winston, also wanted nothing more than simplicity and happiness for her son.
As he grew up, Idris was made sharply aware of the misery his family had suffered before they arrived in Britain. Money was tight, and nothing was taken for granted.
As a black child growing up on the troubled streets of East London, where the National Front was rapidly gaining power, he was warned repeatedly to do his best to keep out of trouble.
Now kids growing up in Hackney dream of being Idris Elba, but back then he was just like all the other boys on the Holly Street housing estate whose heroes would no doubt have included The Bionic Man, footballers George Best and John Barnes, and the actor Robert De Niro.
But most of all, young Idris was fascinated by tales of his paternal grandfather Moses who proved a lifelong inspiration: 'He was a great man,' Idris recalled later. 'He raised my dad and my dad's family. I would still like to be like my own granddad.'
Idris loved to hear tales of Moses Elba, who had been a sailor and a policeman.
When he was not too exhausted from long shifts at the factory, Winston would often entertain his young son with colourful tales of fearless Moses' exotic travels. Although Idris never actually met Moses, in his head his grandfather became larger than life and, as soon as he was old enough, he even had Moses Elba's name tattooed on his arm.
And it was those tales of travel and adventure that led Idris to believe that he too could set out and conquer the wider world beyond his window. He just needed to find a way out of Holly Street.
While he dreamt of following in the footsteps of his grandfather's great escapades, Idris found his mother's overly protective nature could become a little smothering at times, especially when she enrolled him at Stormont House, a primary school for children with special needs, although his only health issue was asthma!
'That was a weird two years of my life,' he said, looking back on his childhood.
'Very weird. I was asthmatic but I was fine as long as I wasn't running around.
'And here I was at this amazing school that was full of kids with very severe disabilities and kids who were just straight up bad – and I was chucked in the middle of that.'
Idris may look fit and strong these days, but he still carries an inhaler and when he is in LA the pollution can be a problem: 'Smog is a big factor,' he says.
'I have to use my inhaler a lot.'
In November , he also suffered a severe asthma attack on a plane prior to the South African premiere of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, which saw him briefly hospitalised.
Aside from the occasional asthma scare, life in the East End was pretty happy for Idris, especially when he left Stormont in and moved on to nearby Queensbridge Primary School: 'What I remember is the summertime,' he recalled fondly.
'Hackney was a warm, carefree place.'
Idris has idyllic memories of playing football in the streets while his dad hustled at pool in the Middleton Arms, a pub near London Fields long since demolished and replaced by an apartment block. He said: 'I'd run across the road to get some crisps – and because they loved my dad, they loved me.' He would come back laden with enough for the whole team.
'It was the best time of my life,' he continued.
'Hackney is very dear to me, it was where I learned to ride my bike and London Fields was my park of choice. I used to ride my bike around Haggerston, down the ramps and along the canal – that's what all the kids did.
'It's always good to come home whenever I'm in London. When I'm filming, I quite often jump in the car and drive around Dalston, which is my old stomping ground.
It's absolutely no surprise to me that the area is now one of the trendiest places in London – Hackney has always been cool,' he added.
In the evenings, Idris would race home for dinner in front of the television, glued to American shows such as Dallas and Starsky & Hutch, struggling to imagine what it would be like to be part of such a glamorous world.
Without any siblings for company, he would invent characters to play with, planting the early seeds of his acting career: 'I think it comes from being an only child,' he later explained.
'When you've got two toys, you do two voices. I wouldn't want to go to bed because I would be in this imaginary world playing with my toys.'
But his father found Idris's daydreams frustrating and often they would clash over school work and even football – Idris supports Arsenal, although he admits to having gone to just two matches, while Winston preferred rival team Manchester United!
But Winston made sure Idris was surrounded by their extended family every weekend, so he did not grow too lonely, and as a result he forged close relationships with his cousins.
'It really informed how I related to other kids,' he said. 'I wanted everyone to be my mate; I wanted to have close relationships. My cousins and I were really, really close when I was a kid. They used to come round and when it was time for them to leave on Sunday night, and my uncles would come to pick them up about six because it was bedtime, I used to cry.
'The house would be so empty, and it had been all laughing and joking, playing hide-and-seek, then when they left it was just me and my mum and dad.
So at school I really got close to mates and I know my mates still now. They're brothers now, y'know?'
After a short stint at Laburnum Primary School in Haggerston, which he loved, Idris moved with many of his friends up to the co-educational Kingsland High School in Hackney at the age of But in , just two months after starting the first term, the Elba family left their ninth-floor council flat in Hackney and stepped onto the property ladder with a four-bedroom house on Braemar Street in Canning Town.
Film biography terbaik A passionate advocate for diversity, inclusion, and social justice, Idris has used his platform to challenge societal norms and uplift others. His charisma has won him admirers on both sides of the Atlantic, and the role of Bond may yet beckon. He inhabits each role as if he were born to play it. More Books by Nadia Cohen.Winston and Eve could not have been more proud as the house was a symbol of the great financial and social progress they had made since arriving in Britain, but Idris hated the idea of leaving his friends.
Now the street is run down, with rusty cars sitting on bricks and sofas rotting outside derelict terraced houses.
Today one in five people living on the street claim income support, and, according to official figures, the same number suffer from serious long-term illness. Half of those of working age have no formal qualifications. Even the council admits that Braemar Street is in one of the top 5 per cent 'most deprived areas' in the UK.
Crime is rampant.
A few years ago, parcel firm DHL added the neighbourhood to a list of 'no-go' places it deemed too dangerous to deliver to – alongside Iraq, Afghanistan and parts of Cambodia.
But for Winston, buying the property back then was a badge of honour. Little more than a decade he had left Africa virtually penniless, this was a tangible sign that he had made a success of his new life.
His hard graft at the Ford factory had paid off at last.
'They were lovely people, and perfect neighbours who – unlike some these days – kept the place tidy,' recalled Audrey O'Shea, who lived next door, and whose sons would play football in the street with Idris. 'All that Winston and Eve wanted was to have a nice life, give their son a good upbringing and be good citizens.
You got the impression that's what got them up in the morning. Idris repaid them by turning into a fantastic, hard-working boy.'
But for Idris, swapping multi-racial Hackney for an area that was then mostly white and completely alien proved a traumatic change: 'I was really devastated when we left and moved to Canning Town,' he admitted.
Worse still, arriving at his new school with his mother on the first day, and observing a dining room full of boys, he noticed a glaring omission on the curriculum.
'I said to my mum, "Where do the girls eat?"' he recalled. 'The receptionist started laughing. She said, "This is a boys' school." I felt robbed
'I couldn't even understand the concept. A boys' school, what is that? Did I do something wrong? Am I in trouble?'
Already tall for his age, Elba immediately struggled to fit in with the other boys at Trinity Comprehensive School.
'I got immediately sized up,' he reflects. '"Oh yeah, we know who you are. You from Hackney, yeah? Big man." The best fighter in my year, big fucker, immediately wants to fight me.
'I can remember the sights and the smells of that school, thinking, "What am I doing here?" I'm quite an open person, and being tall and big, you find yourself alienated a little bit because you're bigger than everyone else.
So I found myself talking with a softer voice and doing whatever anyone suggested at school because I wanted to fit in.'
But almost from day one Idris was a target for bullies, because of his size and race, which made him stand out from the others. He did everything he could to fit in at Trinity, without much success. The first thing he did was to shorten his name, which was of Krio African origin, because he was bullied for it sounding 'girly'.
He was taunted about being called Idrissa (his full name), which led the boys to call him 'Melissa'. 'Idrissa is my name,' he said. 'Idrissa is sort of like a firstborn son, but I took off the "a" at the end because it used to get me in trouble at school. It was very feminine sounding. I'd get teased and end up beating someone up.
'As a kid, yeah, it happened often.
I was really conscious that my name was so different. Everyone was called Jason or Terry or James or Michael. Then there'd be Idris. My name would always get a snicker or two when I was a little kid.' But he refused to sit idly by and allow his classmates to mock him. In fact, he did not let anyone get away with bullying: 'I quickly got well known because I was tall and I wasn't taking any shit,' he said.
From an early age Idris learned that he would have to fight for what he wanted.
It is a celebration of a man who has proven that success is not just about reaching the top, but about the journey, the obstacles overcome, and the lives touched along the way. Although possessed of a brooding screen presence which served him so well as DCI John Luther in the BBC's terrifying crime drama series Luther, will show a whole new side to Idris as he forays into the voice acting world as villainous tiger Shere Khan in The Jungle Book remake and even a role in Pixar centrepiece Finding Dory. But what of the man himself? So now what, Idris?And what he wanted more than anything was to get out of Canning Town.
'I was born in Forest Gate and lived in Hackney and in Canning Town,' he explained. 'We moved to Canning Town when I was going into the first year of high school. That was a culture shock, on many levels. Everyone's like, "What are you doing here, you black bastard?"
'According to my parents it was nicer, but it was just as poor.
It was mainly white and Indian, as opposed to Hackney, which is very mixed. Canning Town was like a slap in the face, like, "Wake up! This is the rest of the world". I was very much a Hackney lad.'
Idris has always remained loyal to his Hackney roots, and was honoured more than three decades after leaving the area when a housing project was named after him.
In January , he returned to his childhood home to open two new blocks of apartments, which had been named in recognition of his acting and charitable achievements.
'I was really moved,' he said after hearing about the honour.
IDRIS ELBA BIOGRAPHY: A TRAILBLAZER’S ... - Amazon.co.uk: See all details. The Real Enid Blyton. Idris Elba inhabits each role as if he were born to play it, and approaches each performance as if it were his last. In this, the first biography of the onscreen legend, Nadia Cohen reveals Idris's life behind the lens, exploring just what it is that makes him so ambitious, adaptable and endlessly watchable.
'You can give me all the parts in the world, but that means so much. I've lived all over the place, but the only place I recognise as where I come from is Hackney.
'It is well documented that I was in Hackney for quite a long length of time. But just to have someone say: "We are so proud of what you have done we are going to name a building after you that is cost-effective, clean and new" is a great honour.
'Everyone has the right to own a home so I think this is a really good idea.
I told my dad and I think he believed it less than me.'
His father Winston toured the £ million housing project with his son, and when a plaque was unveiled he joked: 'I thought the building belonged to him.'
Danny Lynch, London development director for A2Dominion New Homes, said at the time: 'We're delighted to name Elba House after Idris Elba, who has strong links to the Hackney area.
The block is providing much-needed high-quality new homes for affordable rent, whilst a smaller block at the scheme offers affordable homes for part-buy part-rent to help local people onto the property ladder.'
But years earlier, in the early s, Idris's small, tight-knit family had struggled hard to get on the housing ladder themselves.
Idris elba film biography book Print length. Through intimate details, inspiring anecdotes, and a thorough exploration of his personal and professional journey, this book offers readers a comprehensive look at how Idris Elba has become a global force—one whose work transcends entertainment and serves as a beacon of hope and empowerment for millions worldwide. Although possessed of a brooding screen presence which served him so well as DCI John Luther in the BBC's terrifying crime drama series Luther, will show a whole new side to Idris as he forays into the voice acting world as villainous tiger Shere Khan in The Jungle Book remake and even a role in Pixar centrepiece Finding Dory. See all details.Their decision to pack up and leave their flat in Hackney was a tough one but the traumatic move would give Idris the impetus he needed to turn his life around. From the moment he arrived in Canning Town, he became determined not to stop until he had swapped Holly Street for Hollywood.
CHAPTER 2STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD
The streets of East London were tough places for black kids to find themselves in the s, and, when the Elba family moved from a council flat in Hackney to a small house in Canning Town, Idris quickly realised that he stood a long way out from the crowd.
He sensed a very different atmosphere in Canning Town, which was at that time quickly becoming one of the strongholds of the far right National Front party.
Without realising the full extent of the unrest, his parents had unwittingly decided to settle in an area where a political move towards unity on the far right had been steadily growing during the s.
Shortly before Idris was born, the right-wing extremists got the impetus they needed when a moderate Conservative Party was defeated in the General Election.
Leader of the League of Empire Loyalists A.K. Chesterton, cousin of the novelist G.K. Chesterton, argued that a racialist right-wing party would have won the election and started to gather followers at grassroots level. He opened talks with the British National Party, led by John Tyndall, and they agreed a merger, along with the Racial Preservation Society, and so the National Front was founded on 7 February
The purpose of the National Front was to oppose immigration policies in Britain, and multinational agreements such as the United Nations or NATO as replacements for negotiated bilateral agreements between nations.
The newly formed political party, which horrified many in Britain, banned neo-Nazi groups from being allowed to join the party, but members of Tyndall's Greater Britain Movement were allowed to join and the National Front quickly swelled its ranks.
By the time Idris was starting primary school in the mids, the National Front had almost 20, members and 50 local branches, consisting mainly of blue-collar workers and the self-employed, who resented immigrant competition in the labour market and for scarce housing.
Some recruits came from the Monday Club within the Conservative Party, which had been founded in reaction to Harold Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech.
Immigrant families like the Elbas were bewildered by inflammatory speeches they heard on the streets around their new home as the National Front fought to gain power on a platform of opposition to communism and liberalism, support for Ulster loyalism, opposition to the European Economic Community, and the compulsory repatriation of new Commonwealth immigrants who had entered Britain under the British Nationality Act,
But street demonstrations by the National Front were already becoming a common sight, particularly in East London, where they often faced anti-fascist protestors from opposing left-wing groups, including the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers Party).
(Continues)Excerpted from Idris Elba: So, Now What? by Nadia Cohen. © Nadia Cohen. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
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