IDRIS ELBA is a businessman. In fact, he might remind viewers of Stringer Bell, the no-nonsense Baltimore drug lord Mr. Elba memorably played on the HBO series “The Wire.” “You got to think about what we got in this game for,” Stringer once admonished a colleague, his soft, deep voice studded with emphatic profanity (here deleted): “Was it the rep? Was it so our names could ring out on some ghetto street corner? Naw, man. There’s games beyond the game.”

Though in real life Mr. Elba’s jaunty accent comes from East London, not Baltimore, in a phone interview from his Florida home he sounded much like the driven Stringer, who ran heroin-distribution meetings according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Stringer had no interest in cred-building gangster posturing, and Mr. Elba has little patience for the actor’s equivalent: endless prattling about art and the corresponding reluctance to speak frankly about one’s own ambitions.

Idris Elba is in the Idris Elba business. And he seems as interested in talking about the game beyond the game — the step-by-step process of becoming a star — as he is in talking about the action comedy “The Losers,” out on Friday.

“In this day and age, actors can’t afford to be pompous,” the 37-year-old Mr. Elba said, discussing a career that first caught fire with “The Wire” and peaked with last year’s popular but critically reviled potboiler “Obsessed.” “You can’t afford to turn your nose up at things. Audiences want to see you a bit more dynamic. We know you can act, Daniel Day-Lewis. That’s fantastic. Show us a bit more. We want to be entertained.”
Though Mr. Elba’s early career — he was a stage and television journeyman in London and New York — received a huge boost from “The Wire,” he has expressed discomfort with it, saying he didn’t watch many episodes and hopes not to play a drug dealer again. “It was a gift and a curse,” he says now.

He was surprised when Stringer was — spoiler alert from 2004! — killed off but says the timing aided his move to films. “I died on that show at a time where people were interested in my character,” he said, comparing himself to another actor and his signature HBO role. “If Tony Soprano had died in the fourth season, James Gandolfini would be a bigger actor than he is now.”