Idris Elba Explains Why He Longer Describes Himself As A ‘Black Actor’

deadline.com:

Idris Elba has stopped describing himself as a “Black actor,” claiming the description “put me in a box.” Speaking to Esquire UK in its spring issue, Elba said he came to a realization, and resolved to do something about it, even if it was a small gesture. “We’ve got to grow.

We’ve got to. Our skin is no more than that: it’s just skin,” he said in the interview. Acknowledging that he might be “the first to look like me to do a certain thing,” he emphasized, “And that’s good, to leave as part of my legacy.

So that other people, Black kids, but also White kids, growing up in the circumstances I grew up in, are able to see there was a kid who came from Canning Town who ended up doing what I do.

It can be done.” Elba is out promoting his upcoming Netflix film, Luther: The Fallen Sun, which hits theaters on February 24 and debuts on Netflix on March 10.