Idris Elba Reveals Why He Gets 'Disheartened' Over James Bond Talk

Idris Elba is as handsome as ever on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine’s August 2019 issue.

Here’s what the 46-year-old actor had to share with the mag…

On the potential to be the next James Bond: “James Bond is a hugely coveted, iconic, beloved character, that takes audiences on this massive escapism journey,” he says. “Of course, if someone said to me ‘Do you want to play James Bond?,’ I’d be like, Yeah! That’s fascinating to me. But it’s not something I’ve expressed, like, Yeah, I wanna be the black James Bond. Because, by the way, we’re talking about a spy. If you really want to break it down, the more less-obvious it is, the better. You just get disheartened [about the rumors.] when you get people from a generational point of view going, ‘It can’t be.’ And it really turns out to be the color of my skin. And then if I get it and it didn’t work, or it did work, would it be because of the color of my skin? That’s a difficult position to put myself into when I don’t need to.”

On his next role as Macavity in Cats the movie: “The myth is that cats have nine lives, and he has one left. So he’s desperate to be acknowledged, and he’s slightly unhinged, and he’s obviously met death a few times and gotten past it. The character has complexities, and I think that [director] Tom Hooper…wanted someone who could pull off that stuff—meanwhile singing and dancing and meowing.”

On finding success: “You know that whole Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. I had put my work in. And so yeah, it was sort of like, crawl crawl crawl crawl c-r-a-w-l—stop—crawl—RUN! It really was that for me.”

For more from Idris, visit VanityFair.com.