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The GQ Cover Story: Idris Elba
From The Wire to Pacific Rim to this fall's Mandela, Elba is the solitary man who always draws a crowd
By Zach Baron
Photograph by Sebastian Kim
October 2013
Late one night, factory floor, somewhere in East London. Idris Elba is two decades younger—so not yet The Wire’s Stringer Bell, or Pacific Rim’s Stacker Pentecost, or Nelson Mandela, but still basically the guy he is now: bluntly good-looking, square-shouldered, with a charm so easy it borders on evasive. This is the factory where Elba’s father works. The son has already been a tire fitter, a shop clerk, a DJ, and a drama student, until the money to pay for school ran out. Now, in lieu of a better option, he works here, on the night shift, welding side panels onto a never-ending procession of Ford Fiestas. Often he falls asleep as car after car passes by; to this day in England people drive Fiestas that are missing their bottom welds on account of Idris Elba. He sleeps and wakes up and thinks about his father, doing this same job for thirty years and counting.
This is the night Elba decides he’s had enough. Before he comes to work, he buys a one-way plane ticket to New York. At the plant, he goes by his dad’s office to say good-bye. His dad’s a boss by now, and with that responsibility come certain privileges, which include the keys to a little sports buggy—a go-kart, really, for getting around the factory—keys that Elba, in the midst of an awkward, emotional farewell, swipes from his father’s desk.
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