The actor has played bad guys in both serious dramas like Beasts of No Nation and more light-hearted fare like Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. <\/p>
Idris Elba has embodied his fair share of both heroes and villains over the years \u2013 and the Luther<\/a> star has revealed that sometimes playing antagonists can be \u201ca bit of therapy\u201d.<\/p>\n The actor \u2013 whose bad guys roles have included parts in both serious dramas like Beasts of No Nation and more light-hearted fare like Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw \u2013 made the comments during a recent interview with the Wall<\/a> Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n He explained: \u201cThese people get to say things that we only think in the deepest, darkest recesses of our brains.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say horrible things and scream horrible things and get to be completely socially unacceptable. As an actor, that\u2019s sometimes a gift, sometimes a bit of therapy.\u201d<\/p> But he pointed out that there was one thing that was essential when it came to playing evil characters: they had to be well-written.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see a really interesting bad guy, you\u2019re going to think about the actor, but think about the writer<\/em>,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s the writer who\u2019s dark. You\u2019ve got to give him or her a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n Elba\u2019s career has seen him take on a huge variety of often very different roles, with his credits running the gamut from one of the most well-regarded TV shows of all time in The Wire to one of the worst reviewed films ever made in Cats.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Recent credits have included leading the Apple TV+ thriller series Hijack<\/a>, reprising his iconic role as John Luther in Netflix film spin-off Luther: The Fallen Sun<\/a> and voicing Knuckles the Echidna in both Sonic the Hedgehog 2<\/a> and a self-titled TV series<\/a> for Paramount Plus.<\/p>\n And he has a lot of future projects in the pipeline too: with upcoming film roles set to include the action-comedy Heads of State from Nobody<\/a> director Ilya Naishuller, the animated black comedy Fixed, and the survival thriller Above the Below, which he is also co-directing.<\/p>\n As for when he\u2019ll next be playing one of those unrepentant bad guys, we\u2019ll have to just wait and see. After all those rumours about him becoming 007 over the years, maybe he\u2019d actually prefer the chance to play a Bond villain\u2026<\/p>\n Check out more of our\u00a0Film<\/a>\u00a0coverage or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Streaming Guide<\/a>\u00a0to find out what\u2019s on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to\u00a0The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div> <\/body><\/html>\n The actor has played bad guys in both serious dramas like Beasts of No Nation and more light-hearted fare like Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":52911,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift.jpg",1602,1067,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift-1024x682.jpg",800,533,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift-1536x1023.jpg",1536,1023,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/06\/idris-elba-on-the-therapy-of-playing-villains-thats-sometimes-a-gift.jpg",1602,1067,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The actor has played bad guys in both serious dramas like Beasts of No Nation and more light-hearted fare like Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/52910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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