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.