Idris Elba's speech on diversity yesterday to parliament was good.
Posted by
LMS (aka RufusS)
Jan 21 '16, 09:14
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"None of us are just one flavour or one colour. If we were, we’d be one- dimensional. And that’s what used to drive me mad as an up and coming actor. My agent and I, we’d get scripts and we were always asked to read the “black male” character. Or “the athletic type.” And that was just Crimewatch… But when a script called for a “black male”, it wasn’t describing a character. It was a describing a skin colour. A white man – or a caucasian – was described as “a man with a twinkle in his eye”.
My eyes may be dark, but they definitely twinkle! (Ask the Mrs…) And I was like “I wanna play the character with a twinkle in his eyes!” So I got to a certain point in my career, and I saw that glass ceiling; I was very close to hitting my forehead on it. I was busy, I was getting lots of work, but I realised I could only play so many “best friends” or “gang leaders”. I knew I wasn’t going to land a lead role. I knew there wasn’t enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead.
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