‘They stuck it right in my face’: Idris Elba ‘nearly’ lost his life after being held at gunpoint in the US

Idris Elba has recalled a terrifying incident which could have cost him his life.

The Hackney-born actor, 50, explained that he had tried to help a woman who was being threatened by her partner, but that his good intentions were misinterpreted and things soon took a chilling turn.

“I nearly lost my f**king life, after attempting to stop a man threatening his girlfriend outside a club,” the Lion King actor told the Daily Mail on Wednesday.

“A guy (was) whaling on his missus, screaming in her face, ‘I’ll f**king kill you,’ and so on. I come round and I go ‘Look how beautiful she is. Why would you talk to this beautiful princess like that?’”

Elba. who has been married to model Sabrina Dhowre since 2019, claimed the man then, “Pulled out a gun, stuck it right in my face, and goes, ‘You talking about my girl?’”

“He thought I was trying to hit on her,” The Wire actor recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Don’t play negotiations like that’... Consequences, man.”

Elba should know a thing or two about negotiating having starred in the Apple TV+ series Hijack in which he played a character traveling on a flight from Dubai to London which turns into a hostage situation.