He has also acted in films such as American Gangster (2007), Obsessed (2009), Prometheus (2012), Pacific Rim (2013), Star Trek Beyond (2016), Molly's Game (2017), The Dark Tower (2017), Hobbs & Shaw (2019), and The Harder They Fall (2021).

[14] Elba was raised in Hackney and East Ham[15] and shortened his first name to "Idris" while at school in Canning Town, where he first became involved in acting.

[11] Elba briefly attended Barking and Dagenham College,[17] leaving school in 1988 and winning a place in the National Youth Music Theatre after a £1,500 Prince's Trust grant.

[18] To support himself between roles in his early career, he worked in odd jobs including tyre-fitting, cold-calling and night shifts at Ford Dagenham.

[19] He worked in nightclubs under the DJ nickname "Big Driis" during his adolescence, but began auditioning for television roles in his early twenties.

[11] Elba's first acting role was in Crimewatch murder reconstructions, and in 1994, he appeared in a BBC children's drama called The Boot Street Band.

In an episode of series 1, he played a central character, an African petty thief named Charlie Carter, who lost his wife to childbirth and had to figure out how to support his newborn daughter.

After a supporting turn on a 2001 episode of Law & Order, Elba landed a starring role on the HBO drama series The Wire.

[23] In January 2009, Variety reported that Elba would portray Charles Miner, a new rival to Dunder Mifflin regional manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) for NBC's The Office.

[22] In September 2009, he signed a deal to star as the lead role on the six-part BBC television series Luther, which aired in May 2010.

[24] At the 69th Golden Globe Awards telecast on 15 January 2012, Elba won Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film for his role on the BBC crime thriller series Luther.

[28] Elba's next film was Legacy (2010),[29] in which he portrayed a black ops soldier who returns to Brooklyn after a failed mission in Eastern Europe, where he has undertaken a journey looking for retribution.

[29] He starred in Dark Castle's adaptation of DC/Vertigo's The Losers, under the direction of Sylvain White, in the role of Roque, the second-in-command of a black-ops team out for revenge against a government that did them wrong.

[32] In August 2010, Elba signed up to portray the title character in a reboot of James Patterson's Alex Cross film franchise.

[35] As part of his preparation for the role, Elba spent a night locked in a cell alone on Robben Island, where Mandela had been imprisoned.

In 2016, he had several voice roles: the cape buffalo chief of police, Chief Bogo, in Disney's Zootopia, alongside Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman; villainous tiger Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (2016), a live-action adaptation of the animated 1967 film of the same name, directed by Jon Favreau; and sea lion Fluke in Pixar's Finding Dory, alongside Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks in Finding Nemo (2003).

In 2017, he played Roland Deschain in the Stephen King film adaptation The Dark Tower,[40] starred in The Mountain Between Us and Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut Molly's Game, alongside Jessica Chastain.

[46] Elba portrayed the character Solomon Reed in Phantom Liberty, a 2023 downloadable expansion for CD Projekt Red's 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077.

[51] Elba signed a deal with Apple to produce original content through his Green Door Pictures production company.

[52] In February 2021, it was reported that the companies of Elba and his wife, Sabrina Dhowre, would be developing an Afrofuturist adult animated sci-fi series, tentatively titled Dantai, for Crunchyroll, which would be about a time when biotech has "created an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

He had the idea to develop the music from his album Idris Elba Presents Mi Mandela into a show, which eventually resulted in a play called Tree that premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2019.

[76] The two writers had worked on the project for four years, following an approach from Elba asking them to develop his idea for a musical based on the album, on which Allen-Martin had also collaborated.

[77][75] Allen-Martin and Henley described their creative input as having included research and script-writing, as well as coming up with the play's title, and that after being removed, they were threatened with legal action if they went public with the story.

[85] In 2020, after hearing Canadian R&B singer Emanuel's debut single "Need You", Elba reached out with an idea for a music video compiled from clips of people sharing the things that were helping them cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

[92] With the release of the Phantom Liberty downloadable expansion for CD Projekt Red's 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077, two of three new radio stations introduced feature Elba.

[97][98] On 11 February 2025, it was announced that Elba invested in Kiro Race Co, a team competing in the FIA Formula E World Championship.

[113] Elba attended the UK government's inaugural knife crime summit in 2024, alongside Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Elba emphasized the importance of action over mere discussion, advocating for a wide range of perspectives, including those of parents, youth workers, and law enforcement to address the issue.

The summit aimed to unite various community groups, tech companies, sports organizations, and public services in an effort to halve knife crime over the next decade.

[120] He hosted The Best FIFA Football Awards at the London Palladium on 23 October 2017, during which he took a selfie of "the best team in the world" which included Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Neymar.