Idris Elba, is a tall dark handsome award-winning British actor, musician, and DJ who is popularly known for his deep baritone voice as well as his movie roles as drug lord and aspiring businessman Russell “Stringer” Bell in the HBO series ‘The Wire’, Detective John Luther in the BBC One series ‘Luther’, and Nelson Mandela in the 2013 biographical film ‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’.
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Idris Elba’s Birth and Childhood
Sometimes, when we look at giant characters such as that of Idris who baffle and thrill us so much on the screens, we may begin to wonder if they were given birth to just the way we were. We begin to habour some ridiculous thoughts that they just may have descended or crashed into the globe as full grown powerful adults. Lol…
Idris Elba was born Idrissa Akuna Elba on 6th September, 1972 in Newham, London. He was born to a Sierra Leonean father, Winston Elba who worked in a Ford motor factory, and a Ghanaian mother, Eve, who had a clerical job. He was the only son of his parents. His parents left Sierra Leon for London soon after their marriage, and that was where Idrissa was born and raised; Holly Street estate in Hackney to be precise, one of the worst estates in London.
Idris Elba schooled at Canning town, one of the most deprived areas in the UK with many long term residents suffering from poor health, low education and poverty. It was there he first engaged in drama. It was also there that he shortened his name from Idrissa to ‘Idris’. It was also during his school days that he had his first big break in acting with the film titled ‘The Stage’.
Elba left school in 1988 and won a place in the National Youth Music Theatre, thanks to a £1,500 Prince’s Trust grant. His first roles were in Crimewatch murder reconstructions. In order to support himself between roles in Crimewatch reconstructions, he worked in jobs such as tire-fitting, cold call advertising sales, and the night shift at Ford Dagenham Factory. He also worked in nightclubs, under the DJ nickname Big Driis, at the age of 19, but began auditioning for television roles in his early twenties. He once opened up on his dark hard days before he came to limelight:
I was running with cats. I mean, I was DJ’ing, but I was also pushing bags of weed; I was doing my work. I had to,” he says of hustling to survive in the city after leaving England nearly two decades ago.
I know that sounds corny, but this is the truth. Elba continues, The apartment we had lived in together was in Jersey City, so when I left, I was sofa-hopping here and there and got to a place where I was parking it in Jersey somewhere and just camping down for the night.”
So you see? Elba’s growing up was not rosy at all. He went through all the rigours just like every other ordinary individual in the society, the poor ones to be precise!
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