The Talks
Idris Elba: “The process is like a jigsaw puzzle”
Mr. Elba, you’ve played a diverse range of characters throughout your career, from The Wire’s Stringer Bell to Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom. How have you ensured such a broad range of roles?
Playing Stringer Bell put me on the map as an actor in America. I had worked in England and I had done decent work, but getting a role on The Wire expanded me into the US in a way that I couldn’t have hoped for! And after that, I continued to get better, bigger roles; I got to work with some really good people. So The Wire really shifted my career massively. But I should be adapting and trying different things, and I think throughout my career, I’ve dodged the bullet of, “Oh, you were great as this role, we would love to see you play that role again.” I have been offered roles that feel very similar to other work I’ve done, and I have definitely tried to avoid those. It can be difficult for my fanbase, they are always surprised! (Laughs) And whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’m not sure.
I am pretty sure that’s a good thing…
At the moment, for me, it’s more about who is making the film, who is the storyteller, is it something that I have done before or not? Those are the decisions I make. I am really open, there’s no role that I wouldn’t consider, but at the same time, if I am working with a filmmaker, that is a long time to spend with someone, so I have to think about what I’m going to learn from that process.
“Architecture is the oddest profession. In the beginning you're very much involved in finding your voice and locating yourself artistically. For 25 years you're working with small projects, domestic projects. And then you mature at 50 and you're given your first projects.”
“Follow the things you love! Follow the things that you are intensely passionate about. Follow the things that you like to do, which often to others might seem unimportant.”
“Belief is very important. It’s like when you are riding a horse and you want it to go to the left, you look to the left first and then pull the horse’s head. As a human being it is the same thing: wherever you put your attention is probably where you are going to find yourself.”
“Right now we are 40 people working in Osteria Francescana, for 28 or 30 covers a night. So, it’s totally the opposite of a business. You cannot survive with that. But we believe in those kinds of dreams and so I keep investing, and reinvesting, and reinvesting.”
“I am less anxious to have a successful career. There were times when I was anxious — even in the past, people said, ‘You make successful films.’ But my films were never successful. Even The Godfather got a terrible review. My films did better over time.”
“I’ve been very lucky — I took the risk to do the things that interested me, so I could have no possible complaints. There’s nothing else I could ask for, really, and if I drop dead tomorrow, I would have had a terrific time.”
“It’s hard to watch the misses, it’s hard to be criticized. But you’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”
“Any kind of quest for achievement has some kind of a personal drive behind it. I'm sure some people would say that it's obviously about the ego, but on the other hand, it's not as if I'm competing against anybody. It's not as if I'm trying to outdo anybody. It's just me trying to do something to see if I can.”
“I try not to look back. I’m looking forward. I’m worried more about what I’m going to do next week than I am what I did last week. There are too many things to do. Looking back is for everybody else.”
“It’s easy to have inspiration and have a vision and an aesthetic, but if you don’t have the execution and you don’t get it out there properly and on time, it doesn’t matter. It’ll sink.”
“In life it’s about opening yourself up. It’s about tapping into your instincts and your energies. I think I got very good at that. I have to be open and I have to be open to the possibilities.”
“For me it’s a lot about physicality, about how I feel. When you have these hardships or when you see someone you love in pain or you struggle, all the petty shit goes away. You are like, “I can’t believe I was worried about this other thing,” when you see what really matters.”
“It’s important to say no – especially earlier in your career – because life is short and you want to be proud of things that you have done, not ashamed of them.”
“Wherever any of us have been wounded, if we dive into what those wounds are, if we go down into and do the hard work within those wounds, we’ll actually find ourselves, we’ll find our real giftedness, a sincere, true giftedness.”
“I don’t want to be pigeonholed — it’s important to keep evolving, experimenting and reinventing yourself, otherwise it’s like hitting a drum, the same note over and over again. I think you should want to change, to try different things.”
“To be an artist, you must start with a considerable drive; in my case it was a fierce madness, a wildness. I think that’s the mark of an artist, actually, that they are rebellious, unruly… And I was one of them myself.”
“If you’re doing one thing, you can burn yourself out. But for me, if ever one of those things burnt out, I would have moved to another one. So it makes it difficult but it makes it possible to keep going.”
“Having come out as a gay man and the self-confidence that gives you is huge! It affects every aspect of your life, including my work. People like honesty. They respect honesty. And my film career took off once I came out.”
“I’m doing things more personally than ever before because that’s what my project is based on, that’s who I am and I have never been this happy my whole life — but it was a long road to get here.”
“The more experience you have, the more time you’ve spent on this earth, the more regrets you accumulate. It’s normal. You can’t do everything right, nobody’s perfect. But if you think too much about that, you’re not here. You have to make some efforts to stay open-minded.”
“I think it’s so good to try new things and open the window and let some fresh air in and try to eliminate any regrets.”
“One of the reasons why I have this much success is because I’m hard on myself. Until now, I never really saw myself as a talented chef! I don’t take the easy way. I put in the time. From the age of 17 until 23, I didn’t take any vacations, I had almost no days off.”
“I think you have to slow down a little bit. But I am just trying to make work; I am just out there making work. I take care of myself so that I can survive. I used to not take care of myself so well, but now I do.”
“You can look at these tough times as an opportunity to get closer and to learn from each other. I learned a lot from my wife. There are so many things that pop up. If you are paying attention, you can learn every second of the day. Life is my guru.”
“Life is struggle. Life is about struggle. You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. It’s about challenging yourself and pushing yourself, you know? You become content. That’s not happiness.”
“In your life there’s a moment when the door opens and you need to walk through the door then. You can’t say then, “Well, I’ll go through it two years from now. I’ll do it, I’ll save up some money...” Because by then the door will be closed.”
“The truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. And that’s it! May it be ugly, may it be beautiful, may it be perverse, may it be all of those things. That’s it, I can’t lie; it is what it is, unabashed, naked. I expect that of myself, that’s for sure.”
“I have to free myself from my creation, I have to send it off, I have to give it up. And that is also the beauty, that you pass on something, that you let something live, that you allow it to confront. To get in contact with others.”
“When you are at a crossroads, mistakes can help you decide the right way forward, and I think I really grew when I understood that I need to accept my mistakes.”
“You can work hard at this skill forever, you never reach the end; you never are a master, you’re never done. Writing is endless and I like that. I like that you can never conquer it.”
“I think you always have to have risk when you’re creating a piece of art. Without that, I don’t understand really what the drive is to succeed. It’s the risk factor that, weirdly, keeps you feeling safe. It keeps you on your toes.”
“I have the freedom to express myself. And it doesn’t matter if somebody’s going to pay me or pat me on the back for it. I chose to do things that I embrace, that I feel passionate about for whatever reason and I create my freedom around that.”
“Sometimes when you lose faith and you understand that something will never be possible the way that you dreamed, but you keep trying, suddenly one thing flips and everything re-accommodates. It totally flows. You don’t give up — and suddenly it’s almost a transcendental thing.”
“If you have to defend something that you like, it makes you to like it even more. My parents hated the comic strips, they hated rock ‘n’ roll, and when they found out what movies I was going to they also were against that. So everything I loved I had to defend.”
“I always try to concentrate on the process and where the real goal is, which is trying to get up every day and be the best possible version of myself and do the best work I can do.”
“I am tireless, I’m relatively fearless. It’s hard to hear “no” all the time. It can be tough; you have to have the stomach for it.”
“I never thought of art as a career. I thought it was more like a monastic practice. It is something that you do – you can't not do it. If I made money doing it, I would do it; if I didn't make any money, I would do it. Obviously I’m not perfect but the thing I am best at is painting.”
“I think as you are growing up, deciding what you want to do is really the process of elimination rather than gravitating towards something until you land on what really makes you happy.”
“It's just so boring listening to false modesty. I've worked for many, many years so I'm really enjoying that my hard work has paid off… I think you should know your worth!”
“Just about anything is possible if you can find the map or the blueprint to get there. I think you’re only limited by your imagination.”
David Newman: “You’re bonded to it”
Mr. Newman, as a film composer, your philosophy is that “the film itself is king.” What does that mean exactly?
The thing about film is that it’s organic during the making of it; it changes, things happen, but once it's done, once you're scoring it, it doesn't work with you. You have to work with it. You're collaborating with a medium and not with people. By the time you get to postproduction and editing, and its ready to be scored, you're simply trying to give it what it's asking for, you’re trying to provide what's helping the story. So the music is just a small part of it. It's a fascinating part of it, it's probably the least understood part of it — because music is really hard to understand anyway, even for musicians.
You were nominated for an Oscar for your soundtrack to Anastasia, and worked on over 100 films including Heathers, Ice Age, and Spielberg's West Side Story. Is it challenging to tell someone else’s story through your music?
Well, you have to follow the film, and generally, it's not that complicated. It's easy to see what doesn't work. We all understand stories, and the music needs to be in service of that story, otherwise, there's no point in putting in the music. Film isn’t even 100 years old, so before 1930, there was nothing like it. The people that started writing film music in the 1930s — my father Alfred Newman included, but also Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin — they were trying to figure out how you put music in a film when there's talking. The questions they were asking themselves: what is music doing? Why is it there? How much should it be there? Those are the same questions we are still asking ourselves as composers.
