Three Months in a Van Before The Wire

Idris Elba trained at a performing arts school in London, studying art, ballet, theatre and dance, and began working in theatre, which led to other jobs. He later moved to New York City. In an interview with Playboy, reported by CBS News in October 2013, he described how hard that period was: in his words, his career fell flat on its face very quickly for about four years.

He told Playboy he had three or four years of unemployment in which he was not getting acting jobs. During that stretch he lived in a van for about three months. The CBS article does not say where the van was parked or give exact years.

To get by, he did a range of work. In a separate interview he said he sold cannabis for a while to help pay his way, DJed quite a bit, and worked as a doorman at Caroline's Comedy Club in New York, where the comedian Dave Chappelle, who had bought from him, later remembered him. He said he did all kinds of things.

Elba said he kept going by watching actors such as Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes and thinking that he could be right there with them. When he was cast in HBO's The Wire, his wife was about eight and a half months pregnant, and he said that if he had not got the role, he planned to leave the United States.

He played Stringer Bell, a smart, business-minded drug dealer. The role launched his career, according to CBS, and he has since described Stringer Bell as one of the defining parts of his life.