Elba has revealed that “everyone wanted to fight him” when he was growing up in London.
“I went to school, I was a big boy. It’s a boys’ school,” Luther Starr said, speaking to Peter Crouch and Chris Stark on the That Peter Crouch podcast.
The actor added, “Everybody wanted to fight me, or race me or want me on their side. I played a lot of football, I loved it.”
Elba moved from Hackney to Canningtown as a child and joined Trinity Boys School, where he discovered his love of drama, but also found that the students wanted to fight with him.
An award-winning actor realized he wasn’t very academically minded at school, but began to realize he had acting talent. And a drama school teacher pushed the actor to consider a career in the arts.
“Drama was the kind of classroom where I didn’t have to fight or challenge everybody, I just loved drama,” Starr said.
“I was 12, when I was 15 she was like, ‘I really think you should take this into a career’ and at that point I loved school but I wasn’t academic,” she said. continued.
The actor jokingly explained his talent, saying: “I think I probably passed with an A in drama, a B in biology and a D in maths, you know, I wasn’t as academic but eventually She was like, ‘If you really want to take acting seriously, I can help you,’ and she did.
“I played basketball, football, cricket, hockey, rugby, judo and I was good at all of them but drama was a bit left field for me.”
The versatile artist’s acting career spans nearly three decades, including Luthor, The Wire, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Avengers: Infinity War, Beasts of No Nation and Molly’s Game.
Elba’s newest starring role is in the Apple TV+ series Hijack, which follows Elba’s character Sam Nelson as he finds himself on a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London that has been hijacked.