Idris Elba Told Guillermo Del Toro What He Does When He Doesn't Know His Lines, And Now I Can't Unsee It

In 2013, Idris Elba and Guillermo del Toro teamed up for their first, and so far only, movie, Pacific Rim. Elba played Stacker Pentecost in del Toro’s story about a future where giant robots called Jaegers are piloted to battle the Kaiju that keep attacking Earth (we’ll revisit this world in an upcoming Amazon show). Nearly a decade and a half later, the filmmaker has revealed what the actor does when he doesn’t know his lines, and this has me wanting to be on the lookout for this tell when watching Elba’s movies.

This came up when Guillermo del Toro was participating in a THR roundtable with Bradley Cooper, Clint Bentley, Hikari, Noah Oppenheim and Will Tracy. All six wrote movies released in 2025 that have been getting awards buzz; in del Toro’s case, that was his film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. During the get-together, he inquired with Oppenheim, who wrote A House of Dynamite, about his experience working with Idris Elba, as he played the President of the United States in the fellow Netflix subscription-exclusive movie. But before asking his question, del Toro recounted:

Guillermo del Toro wanted to know if Idris Elba did this same squinting movie on A House of Dynamite. Noah Oppenheim answered that the actor did learn his lines on this feature, but there was also “some improvisation around the margins of it.” I suppose going back to A House of Dynamite to check if there is indeed none of this squinting would be as good of a reason as any to rewatch it, along with seeing if my opinion has changed about the movie’s polarizing ending.

The squinting is definitely noticeable in Pacific Rim, however, with the screenshot at the top of this article being one of the many examples. So if Idris Elba wasn’t learning his lines, or at least not learning them as well as you expect from actors of his caliber, was the squinting just to mask the fact that he was reading off cue cards being held offscreen? Or was he just memorizing his lines piecemeal throughout each day, and then started to squint when he couldn’t remember them?

Whatever the answers are, maybe I’ll carve out some time to rewatch the Thor movies, Star Trek Beyond and The Suicide Squad, perhaps along with others, to see if I spot this trademark squinting. Not that this will change my opinion about his acting, as he remains one of Hollywood’s best talents nowadays. Among his accolades are a Golden Globe win and being nominated five other times, as well as seven Emmy nominations. My fingers are crossed that he’ll eventually get Academy Award recognition too.

Idris Elba will be back on the big screen when he’s seen playing Man-At-Arms in Masters of the Universe, which arrives to the 2026 movies schedule on June 5. Then he’ll be seen in the fantasy movie Children of Blood and Bone in early 2027, while his survival thriller Above the Below still doesn’t have a release date.