Has Idris Elba Missed His "Big Time" Window?

I just don't understand his role selection. It's like recent Jake Gyllenhaal. They just sign onto shit willy-nilly. What on earth is this Beast movie coming out now?

Idris Elba taking on a lion is the cinema I need. Man vs. the wild / creature feature horror mayhem is a subgenre that needs to continue and Elba is doing his goddamn part.

I think this is even more insane than the oft ridiculed "Batman punches a shark" scene from the 60's Batman movie.

I was pretty much correct in what I said about him being another Michael Caine/Samuel L Jackson....3 years after this thread was made, he's still a pretty big star, who kind of whores himself out to anything,  but is still in demand across the industry. Back to back he's done an acclaimed western in The Harder They Fall and starred opposite Tilda Swinton in George Miller's Three Thousand Years Of Longing. He can go from leading films by major auteurs like Miller, to doing flop sitcoms on Netflix to doing schlock like Beast to trying to get his own franchise with DC off the back of his Suicide Squad character. 

His career is all over the place, but he stays famous,  booked and busy, so by that measure, he's got the career he wants and it's a success. 

Honestly one of the most overrated actors on the planet,both looks and talent wise.I've never understood the hype.

He's doing fine IMO. He's still in demand, and not every actor needs to be constantly starring in amazing flick after flick. Not to mention the obvious career limitations that he faced at the beginning of his career. Man has starred in two domestic thrillers, and a Tyler Perry flick for godsakes.

I always say Denzel Washington is somewhat overrated relative to the highest level of the GOAT actors ..........but among black American actors - let's just say his closest rival is James Earl Jones and I'd have a hard time even saying Idris Elba does the same thing for a living as either of them ........he actually gets his head blown off tbh......um

Just checking in 4 years after the OP....yeah, he has totally missed his big time window ..........he has to be the most cringe celeb interview going (just saw him talking about "Hijack") - this weird mix of pretentious, an almost total lack of self-awareness, and a strange Zen master........which in theory should make him interesting enough for a big movie career, but .........ah well.......

He talked about his credits recently and it's a lot of TV and voice work.........alrighty then.......

This is a good take. He’s a successful working actor but the movie landscape has changed. He would have thrived a lot more 15-20 years ago.

the fuck is a "big time" window anyway? sounds like something only whites would be destined for.

seriously tho, how many POC actors actually get to become big in an industry that is still dominated and ruled by rich old white dudes? Denzel and Will don't really count as they pretty much appropriated white culture and they're like the only real black superstars of the past 30 years.

how many really talented black actors working today, young and old, will ever get to "hit" the "big time" window (whatever that even means), even if they deserved it as much as anyone? yeah, not many, if at all.

so, i don't think it's Elba. it's the system you have to blame for.

Idris "blowing his career"? LOL, oh please. but discrimination and oppression is still the sad reality for many minorities and marginalised groups everywhere on this planet. and in white Hollywood, it is still reality for POC. the times and opportunities have changed and improved for actors of colour for a while after the big BLM protests in 2020 with producers and studios "allowing" more diversity in movies but only for a couple of years really, with diversity in Hollywood productions regressing again lately. i mean this IS reality: 

www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/ii-2023-04-hollywood-diversity-report

newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/hollywood-diversity-report-spring-2023-movie-industry

www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/hollywood-diversity-inclusion-worse-2022-studies-show-1234655135/

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/diversity-movies-study-annenberg-inclusion-initiative-1235109900/



sure, if they can afford it and enjoy movies that are targeted at a primarily white audience.


is this you saying that Idris is more successful than all of those guys? ok, then what are you complaining about, really?

no shit lol

uh not really? in what way are they better? SLJ has been in like 150 movies at this point, from great to abysmal. he's a workaholic and also not really Elba's generation (neither is Morgan Freeman).

but what was Jamie Foxx's last really big role? Django Unchained in 2012? hmm Leo was in that one, too, and pretty much got all the attention. i would even go as far as to say that that German actor Christoph Waltz whose career peaked at that time, was noticed more than Jamie was. then there was his work for Michael Mann in Miami Vice in 2006 and Collateral in 2004, both being rather niche action films that did not really got so much attention in mainstream audiences (we nerds don't count). he did win an Oscar for Ray in... 2004. kudos, but yeah, that's just another award that's given to black actors to fulfill a quota in a certain year. ( variety.com/2022/awards/awards/sidney-poitier-best-actor-oscars-will-smith-denzel-washington-1235152940/ ) ...uh yeah, that's Jamie's "big time" window career in a nutshell. 

and Michael B. Jordan's career hasn't really taken off yet either tbh. he's in a couple of Marvel movies, but so is Idris, and much more consistently. MBJ has the Creed franchise, Idris has three times the amount of action movies under his belt: Bastille Day, Pacific Rim, The Reaping, Ghost Rider: Ghost of whatevs, Star Trek Beyond, Prometheus, Takers, No Good Deed, The Harder They Fall, Beast, Extraction 2... as for roles where both showed off their acting chops, MBJ has Fruitvale Station and maybe Just Mercy, Idris has Mandela, Beasts of No Nation, Molly's Game, Concrete Cowboy, The Mountain Between Us, Three Thousand Years of Longing from last year.. as for TV, MBJ has one season of The Wire, Idris has 3, plus his very own show Luther, a show that was so successful not with him but BECAUSE of him, plus this new show, Hijack, that's making waves currently.

i'm not really a fan of these kind of comparisons and i'm really not trying to best anyone of these actors with Idris, i think they're all equally great in what they're doing, i'm just trying to show you that Idris is not behind his acting colleagues in any way, and that his career is not stagnating bc he didnt land James Bond lmao. it's ridiculous to assume that. 

Mahershala Ali, Daniel Kaluuya, MBJ, Donald Glover, Lakeith Stanfield, John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Jeffrey Wright, Idris Elba etc etc, they're the same generation more or less and all on pretty much the same level talent-wise and by the amount of attention and roles they're getting, but i don't see anyone of them becoming as "big" as Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, and all the other white actors dominating highest grossing leading actors lists, such as this one:

www.statista.com/statistics/655480/all-time-top-grossing-actors-box-office/

funny that Samuel L. Jackson is at the top, but he's in 4-5 movies every fucking year and, as much as i löve him and respect him and admire his work ethics and all, he's pretty much the token black actor of Hollywood if there ever was one. that's how you get big in Hollywood when you're black.

for good measure, top 20 lists of highest paid actors: www.torontofilmmagazine.com/post/here-are-the-top-20-highest-paid-actors & en.as.com/meristation/news/these-are-hollywoods-25-top-paid-actors-of-2022-and-2023-n/ ...it's a white-out.

so, again, what you are complaining about Idris Elba's career is pretty much due to systematic and structural racism in the industry. that's just the sad reality and still is in 2023.

that, or you are just bashing him because... whatever it is that irks you lol but then you gotta be honest and just say so that you think he sucks. that would be fair enough.