Top 70 Idris Elba Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Waking up in TRUTH is so much better than living in a lie.”

— Idris Elba

2. “I love working. I’m a workaholic and I’m really privileged for some of the jobs I get offered and so I just want to keep going.”

— Idris Elba

3. “I’m an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I’m not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it’s just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I’m still on it and I won’t stand still.”

— Idris Elba

4. “My definition of bad-ass is that I’m a force of nature and true spirit. I’m self-admitting that, and it sounds vain to say that, but I am.”

— Idris Elba

5. “My Father always told me that a fool at 40 is a fool for life.”

— Idris Elba

6. “I’m never shaken or stirred.”

— Idris Elba

7. “There’s the argument that you can relate to someone who’s completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character.”

— Idris Elba

8. “I wasn’t bad at school, but I was never a bookworm.”

— Idris Elba

9. “I come from an era, in my world, where you just had to define yourself as who you are and what you do. I happen to be an actor. I happen to be someone that loves to act, that also likes music, that also likes to speak, and that also has an opinion.”

— Idris Elba

10. “The only thing I change mainly is my sneakers. I love sneakers. But everything’s sort of black or jeans. Jeans, always.”

— Idris Elba

11. “I was in The Wire for three years, and I left at the highlight of that.”

— Idris Elba

12. “In ‘Pacific Rim’ I had to have a haircut I wouldn’t usually rock. However, the moustache I had in the film – that might have to come out again. It was a good moustache. Good times.”

— Idris Elba

13. “I’m tactile, very tactile. A woman who has really nice, looked-after skin is such a turn-on for me. It’s always sexy.”

— Idris Elba

14. “I love bikes. I used to own one, but I fell off it when I was younger and that was the end of my bike riding days until now.”

— Idris Elba

15. “The one album I can’t live without is called ‘Cumbolo’ by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there’s one in particular called ‘This Train.’ I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.”

— Idris Elba

16. “I’m rebelling against being handed a career, like, ‘You’re the next this; you’re the next that.’ I’m not the next anything, I’m the first me. I can’t be myself, I can’t just be Idris Elba. But that’s just the nature of the business.”

— Idris Elba

17. “I’ve never had to explain ‘Prometheus’ to people, ever. Most people get it.”

— Idris Elba

18. “I want to go to Sierra Leone with something – whether it’s some sort of contribution to healthcare, or to the entertainment industry. My cousin is a nurse; we are talking about opening a clinic.”

— Idris Elba

19. “If I was gonna go to jail, I don’t want to go to jail for stealing a bottle of water. I’ll steal that $20 million. At least then it was worth it.”

— Idris Elba

20. “The less I talk about being black, the better.”

— Idris Elba

21. “When I look at my body of work, I’ve played a lot of characters who are morally conflicted – ‘I’m right, no I’m wrong, I don’t know what to do!’ I want to play more characters who don’t care as much, and who aren’t as measured. They are what they are, no apologies.”

— Idris Elba

22. “The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that’s really excellent – not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.”

— Idris Elba

23. “I try to fit in workouts whenever I can.”

— Idris Elba

24. “I think ‘The Wire’ really is relatable. It reflects an ongoing issue across America, about inaccuracies in major cities between rich and the poor and some of the things that go on behind the red tape of council and government bodies.”

— Idris Elba

25. “Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people – do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone’s white. That’s what we have to change.”

— Idris Elba

26. “I watch my daughter wanting to be like other kids and getting upset that she’s not. But I always try and instill in her the idea that she’s perfect as she is.”

— Idris Elba

27. “Sean Connery wasn’t the Scottish James Bond and Daniel Craig wasn’t the blue-eyed James Bond. So if I played him, I don’t want to be called the black James Bond.”

— Idris Elba

28. “I’d rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that’s it. Hopefully that’s it.”

— Idris Elba

29. “What an honor it was to step into the shoes of Nelson Mandela and portray a man who defied odds, broke down barriers, and championed human rights before the eyes of the world.”

— Idris Elba

30. “It’s really funny because the same people who loved me as Stringer Bell were the same people that were watching ‘Daddy’s Little Girls’ literally in tears.”

— Idris Elba

31. “Being able to work with Ridley Scott on this film is like being able to play on the Olympic team for actors.”

— Idris Elba

32. “Nobody likes a celebrity DJ for the sake of style, so I don’t do that – I try to be good at what I do. It’s all about resetting, it’s my escape. It is work, it’s a job, but I just love doing it.”

— Idris Elba

33. “Bond? It is a bit like saying, ‘Do you want to play Superman?’ Anyone would dream of it. It’s one of the most coveted roles in film. I’d be honoured. But I don’t know if it will actually happen. I’m just happy with the idea of being associated with it. It’s nice there’s a lot of good will.”

— Idris Elba

34. “The audience loves it when you pay attention to details.”

— Idris Elba

35. “When you come from an under-privileged background, oftentimes, you feel a little overwhelmed by your education or your lack of.”

— Idris Elba

36. “It’s actually quite criminal how ‘The Wire’ was systematically ignored.”

— Idris Elba

37. “I did a rendition of ‘Billie Jean’ which is on my Soundcloud. I put it on Twitter, and it got about 3000 hits that day.”

— Idris Elba

38. “I still sing on bits and pieces. Singing’s something that I love to do, but it’s not something that I pursue as a career.”

— Idris Elba

39. “I’m not a popular actor. I don’t necessarily want to be famous. I want to be known for great work. I want to be known to surprise audiences.”

— Idris Elba

40. “The adrenaline feeling of jumping out of cliffs and bikes and all of that is very specific to the film. In ‘Pac Rim’ I’m not doing that so much. There isn’t that touch stonework for me in it, but there is a lot of action.”

— Idris Elba

41. “What kind of role do you play after someone like Stringer, you know what I mean? You play another gangster. What’s the point of that? I’ve played the gangster. I try to keep it really varied; it just makes for more of a fun and interesting career.”

— Idris Elba

Featured in: Fun Quotes

42. “I’m a little sheepish about it. Whenever I meet fans and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re so sexy,’ I just don’t get that. There’s no way one man can be universally sexy.”

— Idris Elba

43. “Actors tend to not know how their performances are going to actually be used. Even though the script says one thing, in the edit, it can be something else.”

— Idris Elba

44. “I find that a lot of actors who are good and open to challenges have lived a full life. When you walk into an audition, you have more to say for yourself because you come from the real world. It’s more enticing for directors, I think.”

— Idris Elba

45. “Television, for me, is a medium that I’m probably always going to be attached to, one way or another.”

— Idris Elba

46. “In some countries, no one knows who Idris Elba is.”

— Idris Elba

47. “I love to play different roles. That’s just the kind of actor I am.”

— Idris Elba

48. “I was always a real athletic kid. Then when I got older, I just figured it was part of life to keep training.”

— Idris Elba

49. “The English are good at bad guys – the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.”

— Idris Elba

50. “Africans, we hold on to our youths and whip them into shape.”

— Idris Elba