Notes From The Edge

As Idris Elba returns to the big screen in Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad’s The Mountain Between Us, Emirates Man examines what makes the English actor such a compelling talent

- Michael Conroy

Idris Elba looks nothing less than beaten. It is well below freezing on the border of Alberta and British Columbia in Canada, and his character has just endured a plane crash in the mountains. He’s hauled fellow survivor Alex, played by Kate Winslet, out of ice-cold water and now has to drag her across a frozen wilderness. The Revenant surely has nothing on this.

And if anyone suspects that Elba was, in fact, cooped up in a slightly chilly London warehouse, acting in front of a green screen, nothing could be further from the truth. For The Mountain Between Us, Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad flew Elba  and Winslet up to the top of a frozen mountain range by helicopter and let them get on with the business of making the film in situ. His reasoning was simple. “I didn’t want a wimp,” the director said. “I wanted a man. So I cast Idris.”

“It was very important to The Mountain Between Us that we shot it in such difficult conditions,” Elba agrees. “Because we actually got to experience the conditions that the characters would have had to endure. I think the coldest day was minus 38 if I remember rightly – and believe me that is cold. Full credit to the mountain safety experts who were doing tests for months before filming started to make sure everything was as safe as it could possibly be.”

But the edginess that Elba brings to a role is always present, even if, as an actor, he’s not in any real danger himself. It’s the quality that sums up his allure. Right from his breakthrough role as drug kingpin Stringer Bell in one of the 21st century’s most influential television series, The Wire, Elba has had that invaluable and attractive acting commodity in spades: presence. In