Elba's Ease

Why Is Idris Elba All Smiles? Maybe Because He’S About To Enjoy A Big Fall As The Star Of Several Films, Beginning With The Dark Tower,  Based On The Stephen King Series. Maximillian Potter Catches Up With Him In London And Discovers A Man Who Commands Attention. No Wonder He Can’T Shake The Shadow Of James Bond.

IT’S A Saturday afternoon in late spring, and the Farmers’ Market in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood is bustling: People mill about the tents and tables, blissfully shopping for organically grown tomatoes, raw milk, and little gem lettuce. A white Range Rover pulls up and Idris Elba steps onto the sidewalk. He is dressed in black, from his loafers to the oversized beanie cocked atop his head, and from the looks of it—eyes lowered, hands in pockets—he is doing his best to go unnoticed.

Not gonna happen. As he heads for a nearby restaurant called Electric House, the market comes to a halt. All eyes are on him. Okay, so maybe the market doesn’t come to a complete standstill and perhaps not everyone turns his way, but close to it. Honey, honey, look . . . ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! If this were a market in Topeka—or, heaven help him, Baltimore—the forty-four-year-old Elba would most likely be recognized as Stringer Bell, the Machiavellian heroin dealer he played on the HBO series The Wire. In the UK, where he was raised, he’s better known as the Golden Globe–winning star of Luther, the BBC series on which he plays a gifted detective with a disastrous personal life. Today, however, he’s called out for a role he’s never had and may never play: Just as Elba ducks into the restaurant, an enthusiastic fan cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Idris, you gonna be 007?”