I still sing on bits and pieces. Singing's something that I love to do, but it's not something that I pursue as a career.

Being able to work with Ridley Scott on this film is like being able to play on the Olympic team for actors.

I was in The Wire for three years, and I left at the highlight of that.

In some countries, no one knows who Idris Elba is.

Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people - do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone's white. That's what we have to change.

I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture.

If I was gonna go to jail, I don't want to go to jail for stealing a bottle of water. I'll steal that $20 million. At least then it was worth it.