Idris Elba revealed on the “Changes With Annie Macmanus” podcast that he’s been going to therapy for the last year after developing “unhealthy habits” as a professional actor. Mainly, Elba is such “an absolute workaholic” that there are now instances where he feels more relaxed working than he does with his own family.
“I’ve been in therapy the last… about a year now. It’s a lot right?” Elba said. “In my therapy I’ve been thinking a lot about changing… like neuropaths being shifted. It’s not because I don’t like myself or anything like that. It’s just because I have some unhealthy habits that have really formed. And I work in an industry that I’m rewarded for those unhealthy habits. I’m rewarded for them. I’m an absolute workaholic. And that isn’t great for life, generally.”
“Nothing that’s too extreme is good, everything needs balance. But I’m rewarded massively to be a workaholic,” he continued, noting how his acting jobs take him away for months on end and only encourage him to repeat that cycle. “Those are pathways that I had to be like, ‘I’ve got to adjust.'”
When he’s not acting, Elba is often focused on his second job as a DJ. He even has a music studio in his house, which facilitates him being a workaholic.
“My studio in my house, I just love being in here,” Elba said. “I’ll open that laptop and be like, ‘I don’t know what to make today,’ and it’ll come out like this or that. And I’m exhilarated by that and also so relaxed by it.”
“I could work 10 days on a film, underwater sequences holding my breath for six minutes, and come back and sit in [the studio] and [feel relaxed], more so than sitting on the sofa with the family — which is bad right?” he added. “This is the part where I’ve got to normalize what makes me relaxed, it can’t be all work.”
Elba recently starred in Apple’s thriller series “Hijack,” now available to stream on Apple TV+. He’s set to reprise his voice role of Knuckles in next year’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and star opposite John Cena in the action movie “Heads of State.”
