43-year-old Elba, a British actor who has climbed from poverty in East London’s Canning Town to the upper reaches of the Hollywood A-list, with leading roles in TV’s Luther, The Wire and the film Mandela. He has even been tipped to play Bond.
But if his professional drive for stardom has seemed relentless, Elba’s private life has been relentlessly troubled – as those caught up in it know only too well.
Just a few weeks ago, he walked out on Naiyana Garth, the British mother of his two-year-old son. And now another casualty in the long-running and chaotic Idris Elba script has stepped forward with a story of her own.
This is Sonya Hamlin, a beautiful property lawyer and the ‘secret’ second wife to whom Elba was married for just a few brief weeks before, she says, he reached the devastating conclusion that she would get in the way of his career. She was heartbroken.
Today, in her first-ever interview, the 44-year-old gives The Mail on Sunday an unprecedented glimpse into the emotional life and, some might say, the ferocious ambition of Britain’s biggest rising star.
‘People were telling him he was going to ruin his career,’ she says. ‘He was being told it was an important part of his image to be a single sex symbol in Hollywood and being married would damage that.
‘It was very sad. Idris and I were madly in love, but he was getting a lot of flak for being married. Everyone was like, “Dude, you’re the hottest sex symbol!”
‘“It wasn’t the right look”, that’s what they were telling him. I wanted to save the marriage.’
The two had been introduced by a mutual friend in 2006. Not only was Sonya glamorous, she was an accomplished and ambitious lawyer, and seemed to represent the better life to which Elba, who was born in a Hackney tower block, aspired.
