Elba explores commanding side in ‘Beasts’
Idris Elba has an authoritative streak onscreen, and it’s a quality he has been fostering since his teens.
In drama classes at his English boys’ school, he’d always gravitate toward playing fathers, Elba recalls, “and my teacher’s like, ‘You’re just really into it at 14 years old.’ But I was going off instinct. I’m a people watcher.”
After directing an army of giant robots in sci-fi action adventure Pacific Rim and an acclaimed performance as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk
to Freedom, Elba is another leader of men and a father figure of sorts in the drama Beasts of No
Nation (opens in select cities and on Netflix Friday), albeit one who is merciless and mercenary.
Elba’s Commandant recruits child soldiers in West Africa to fight his battles, and the film follows the relationship between the orphaned boy Agu (Abraham Attah) and the warlord Agu sees as a “God-like creature,” says director Cary Fukunaga.
It’s a role full of ferocity and depth that’s already generating award-season discussion. Elba’s “vivid portrayal as the charming and scary Commandant makes him a front-runner for a supporting-actor nod,” says Fandango.com Oscars expert Dave Karger.
First-time star Attah, 15, could be in the running for best actor as well. The West African teenager continually impressed Elba as they filmed in Ghana. “It was really fascinating to watch an actor who hadn’t done much at all work on his pure instincts,” Elba says. “It was actually quite inspirational.”
He has an off-camera relationship with the boy that has similarities to the one between Commandant and Agu. “He didn’t hate me, but he needed someone to lean on,” Elba says. “I was there as someone who’s been there and done it.”
Many Elba fans — and some corners of pop culture — have expressed interest in him taking on another commanding role as James Bond. But after the uproar that resulted when 007 author Anthony Horowitz described Elba as “too street” to play the secret agent, the actor says firmly, “I’m over talking about that.”
He will play a still-unnamed villain in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond (in theaters July 22, 2016). While not a Trekkie, he has enjoyed it “because I’m almost like a puppet master in this film. They’re using my (acting) tools but in a different way.” Elba’s characters in Trek and Beasts may be “worlds apart,” he says, but the experiences are similar. “What I did as Commandant is steeped in an emotional truth. In this film, there’s a truth because it’s sci-fi.
“I don’t want people to watch ( Trek) and be taken out of it because I’m a dramatic actor. I want you to feel like, ‘ That bad guy is out of here.’ ”