An only child, Idrissa Akuna Elba is an English actor who was born and raised in London, England. His father, Winston, is from Sierra Leone and worked at Ford Dagenham; his mother, Eve, is from Ghana and had a clerical duty. Idris attended school in Canning Town, where he first became involved in acting, before he dropped out. He gained a place in the National Youth Music Theatre - thanks to a £1,500 Prince's Trust grant. To support himself between roles in his early career, he worked in odd jobs, including tyre fitting, cold-calling sales, and night shifts at Ford Dagenham. He worked in nightclubs under the nickname DJ Big Driis during his adolescence, but began auditioning for television roles in his early 20s.
His first acting roles were on the soap opera Family Affairs (1997), the miniseries Ultraviolet (1998), and the medical drama Polizeiarzt Dangerfield (1995). His best known roles are as drug baron Russell "Stringer" Bell on the HBO series The Wire (2002), as DCI John Luther on the BBC One series Luther (2010), and as Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He later starred in the films Daddy's Little Girls (2007), Prom Night: Eine gute Nacht zum Sterben (2008), RocknRolla (2008), The Unborn (2009), and Obsessed (2009). He also appeared in American Gangster (2007), Takers - The Final Job (2010), Prometheus - Dunkle Zeichen (2012), Pacific Rim (2013), Beasts of No Nation (2015), Star Trek Beyond (2016), Molly's Game: Alles auf eine Karte (2017), Der Dunkle Turm (2017), Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), The Harder They Fall (2021), and A House of Dynamite (2025). He voiced Chief Bogo in Zoomania (2016) and Zoomania 2 (2025), Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (2016), Fluke in Findet Dorie (2016), and Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024).
Idris Elba was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II at the 2016 New Years Honours for his services to drama, and was knighted by King Charles III at the 2026 New Years Honours for his services to young people.
