Idris Elba gets Candid for Interview Magazine | Talks Working Hard, DJing, Directing & More

Idris Elba poses shirtless in this brand new cover feature for Interview magazine’s new issue.

Here’s what the 43-year-old actor had to share with the mag:

On constantly working: “…It’s unhealthy to have that much going on. [laughs] I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything, but I sleep less, I’m constantly thinking, I’m constantly multitasking, and I really don’t know what the effects are going to be when I’m older. I don’t ever stop. Not because I’m greedy or anything, but I’m always creating, debating with the part of my brain that is dormant. Wondering how I can move in and create a bit more space and take a bit more time. But it’s almost like the more I achieve, the more capacity I have to achieve. I do worry sometimes about whether I’m going to burn out. Not burn myself out, but burn my art out, with audiences going, ‘Ah, yeah, I’ve seen enough now, thanks very much.’”

On DJ’ing: “Anyway, what happened was, once I got The Wire, my life changed. I couldn’t DJ as much and I couldn’t take it seriously because my career as an actor was just getting to a place where I was finally making it in America. I wanted to be on American TV so much. I didn’t park DJ’ing; I just sort of ended up becoming more of a studio guy. I had a bit more money and I could buy every little piece of equipment and drum machine that had just come out—I’ve got quite a collection now— and I continued to collect music. Then about five years ago, my career blossomed, but I really missed being out on the road, DJ’ing. So I started picking up gigs here and there, and what occurred to me really quickly was that I was going to water down my passion for DJ’ing, because the type of gigs I was getting were celebrity DJ work, and that just didn’t sit right. So I made a decision about five years ago to really do it properly, to do it at that level I had never done it, but take it seriously and not ride the coattails of being an actor. It took a while because I had to take my time to introduce myself into that world: doing remixes, being taken seriously.”

On being in Television:  That’s true. Television is where I cut my teeth. One of my first jobs was in a soap opera, five days a week. And what I found is, although there are different directors coming in and different crews, you just lived in your character. It’s the nature of the story, the ongoing story, and it can get deeper and deeper. And The Wire—I had moved to America a few years earlier. I had to get a job. And this character came about, and I jumped straight in. And it was like, “Today we’re doing this scene in this part of this story line in this part of this world.” You don’t have the luxury like you do in films to do one scene per day. But what kept the quality control up was that the writing was so phenomenal. The guest director could just drop into the world, those characters and their environments, and start filming, because it was sewn into us. That was our world.

For more from Idris, visit InterviewMagazine.com.