Idris Elba and his wife Sabrina Dhowre Elba have received the TIME100 Impact Award for their work in ending hunger through addressing climate change.
The 50-year-old Luther actor says that his acting experience is very helpful in educating and engaging people in climate change.
“As an actor, the skill set between getting someone to believe a fictional story is not too dissimilar from the skill set of trying to tell someone that this is real and it is a problem,” Idris said. “It is about passion and it is about heart.”
His wife Sabrina understands the need to significant issues such as hunger to be addressed on the ground.
“It’s talking to people, and having the privilege of not only being in the bigger rooms, but being on the field, and hearing what rural people are going through in the present time,” Sabrina says. “Not through some data sheet in some room apart and far away from what’s actually happening in the real world.”
Graça Machel, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Farwiza Farhan were also 2023 recipients of the award. The TIME100 Impact Award recognizes global leaders who have gone above and beyond to move their industries, and the world, forward.
The Elbas also became the first couple to receive the 2023 Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The power couple was appointed UN Goodwill Ambassadors for the International Fund for Agricultural Development in 2020.
“We shouldn’t be having a conversation about climate or food without talking about the other, especially where agriculture meets at that intersection,” Idris said. “And unless we all start to really, really pay attention, we just have this irreversible crisis we’re all leading to very, very quickly.”
The couple has established the Elba Hope Foundation which is to, “provide means and measures to create cohesive, sustainable and beneficial conditions, for people to achieve their full potential and for the societies in which they live to thrive.”
Idris recently spoke out to explain why he no longer refers to himself as a Black actor.
