WASHINGTON -- Idris Elba, looking as cool and virile as the fictional Baltimore drug lord whom he so memorably played on the acclaimed HBO series "The Wire," winces at the mention of the s-word.

"Sexy?" he repeats, shifting in his chair and wrinkling his brow. "I'm a little sheepish about it. Whenever I meet fans and they're like, 'Oh, you're so sexy,' I just don't get that. There's no way one man can be universally sexy."

It's a good answer, because had he said, "Hell, yeah, I'm sexy!" even in that cute British accent of his, it wouldn't at all jibe with the image of the sensually serious man whose face these days is all over magazine covers and television and movie screens.

Right now, Mr. Elba's career as an actor also is hot.

And that is something he is not only comfortable with, but eager to talk about. Mr. Elba, through the character of Russell "Stringer" Bell, seduced a loyal following that crossed race, class and gender lines. He also has been the most successful acting alumnus of the series, appearing in a number of movies, such as "American Gangster" with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and several episodes of the TV sitcom "The Office."

His latest project, "Takers," a heist flick starring the rapper T.I., Chris Brown and Matt Dillon, has been in the top three spots in the box office for the past two weekends. Once again, Mr. Elba plays a cerebral criminal, the head of a high-tech high-class ring of thieves who rob banks for big bucks.

He is also back on premium cable TV, in a recurring role in Showtime's new series "The Big C," starring Laura Linney. He will play a love interest of her character, an uptight suburban homemaker who decides to let loose after learning she has terminal cancer. And last year, he was praised in England for his starring role in a new BBC cop drama, "Luther," which U.S. fans will get to see later this year on BBC America.

One morning this month, after a screening of the new movie and a nightclub after-party, Mr. Elba's aura was a bit dim. Still, he was cordial, engaging and thoughtful during a hotel-suite chat, even though he'd been doing back-to-back media interviews all morning. This is part of the job, and he is serious about his work.

Dressed simply in a black T-shirt and denims, he is tall -- 6-foot-2 and change -- lean and muscular, with dark, smoldering eyes, smooth ebony skin, and full lips framed by a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. His look is at once movie-star handsome and warmly familiar, especially to his black fans who see in him the often misdefined black man. He looks like family -- a brother or cousin or a dude you grew up with -- until he starts speaking.

Mr. Elba, 37, was born in East London, the only child of working-class parents from Ghana and Sierra Leone. As a teenager he joined London's National Youth Music Theatre and landed bit parts on British television. His father was displeased when Mr. Elba announced that he did not want to work with him in the Ford factory and struck out for America to pursue an acting career.

As a result of his success in Britain and the United States, Mr. Elba says, his parents are "very proud now, overly so."

"It's weird because my parents don't really understand my business," he says. "I get fan mail all day long, but if a piece happens to get to their house, they're like, 'Oh, my God, you've got a fan! You have to write them back. You have to do it!' " As a teenager, Mr. Elba would accompany an uncle who was a popular DJ on the party circuit. In time, he took over the turntables and went into business for himself. When he moved to the United States in his late 20s, he would support himself between acting gigs by DJ-ing at clubs in New York and Philadelphia. He still DJs, but mostly because he enjoys it, not to pay the bills. Still, in some YouTube videos Mr. Elba looks serious and focused as he works the turntables, his head and shoulders pumping to the beat. He also dabbles in music, singing, rapping and mixing, a characteristic he says he shares with Gordon Cozier, the gangster he plays in "Takers."

"Gordon is a career criminal, he's done it for a long time and he's obviously assessed the risk. I would do the same," he said. "If I was gonna go to jail, I don't want to go to jail for stealing a bottle of water. I'll steal that $20 million. At least then it was worth it."

He added: "I'm an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, it's just that my journey started so, so long ago, and I'm still on it and I won't stand still. We have, on average, 80 years of our lives to live -- 80 years! Why not go to my grave saying, 'I did this human experience!' "

Stringer Bell, the popular character on "The Wire," was similarly ambitious. But he was also vicious, charismatic, smart and so silky that he seduced the girlfriend of a man on whom he'd ordered a hit. How was Mr. Elba able to portray such a complex character so well?

"I can only attribute that to the writing," he says. But in person, Mr. Elba seems to naturally possess the character's chill and calculating manner. And he adds: "I guess being menacing is a thing we all have in us, you know."

Mr. Elba said he thought Stringer deserved to die, and, professionally, he thought it was time for him to move on. "I couldn't play that character forever and if I'd played it any longer I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now," he said. "Interestingly enough, it was the pinnacle of my popularity as that character, and as I left I got offered lots of work to do other things."

And so he takes advantage of every opportunity that comes his way and says he enjoys the variety of roles that he's played. His favorites, so far, he says, have been Capt. Augustin Muganza, a central character in "Sometimes in April," an HBO film about the Rwandan genocide, and the lead character in the upcoming independent film "Legacy." He is particularly excited about that project because he also is executive producer. The story, written by Nigerian British filmmaker Thomas Ikimi, is about a soldier who appears to be going mad after he returns from a failed covert mission. Most of the movie takes place inside a room with a solitary Mr. Elba, sweaty and wild-eyed, acting out his mental meltdown.

"I like roles ... that give an opportunity to delve into hidden emotions, different thought patterns. Myself, as a person, I'm so measured, you know what I mean?"

He adds: "I guess it's that you've worked so hard to get somewhere, you just don't want to blow it off. I envy some of my friends who are musicians and artists, who don't have to worry about what they wear and what they say."

He ruminates about the burden of stardom in a new song he wrote called "Too Black, Too Strong." Over a mellow, hip-hop flavored beat he raps: "I'm so hot right now, I'm at the devil's door ... If I [messed] up now, you and mother wouldn't love me anymore ... I wouldn't be the front page of Essence or Ebony ... Too black, too strong, too right to be wrong."

He says that it is through his music, which he shares with his fans on his Web page, driis.com, allows him to speak his mind, rather than those of the characters he plays. Some of the songs are musings with a message "about us as black people, things we should be aware of within ourselves" and some are seductive torch songs. "Yeah, I grew up on great love songs," he says.

Although he seems to be everywhere these days, one place he doesn't show up often is the tabloids. "That's by design," says Mr. Elba, who is divorced and has an 8-year-old daughter. He says that he is not in a steady relationship and as for marriage, "Been there, done that, and I don't think I'll be doing that again." He seems to steer clear of the celebrity romance merry-go-round, and although he says he enjoys hanging out with fellow actors during shoots, his closest chums are longtime friends from England.

Mr. Elba, who has resident status in the United States, still considers England home.

"I'd say England is where I feel most at home, except I couldn't live there anymore. Because I've traveled outside my little garden and seen there's a bigger field on the other side of that fence," he said. "What I like about America is that it's so big. In England it's different. You know what's going on in Scotland, you know what's happening in Manchester," he said. Since moving to the United States almost 10 years ago, Mr. Elba said, he has lived in Atlanta, Florida, New York and Los Angeles. "I haven't settled on one yet," he said. "... I'm still searching."

Well, at least our homeless hunk is not wanting for work. Just recently came the news that Mr. Elba had been cast as the new Dr. Alex Cross, hero of the James Patterson novels. The role had been played by Morgan Freeman.

Nelson George, a writer and filmmaker, said Mr. Elba's talent and work ethic have positioned him to take advantage of a generational shift change among big-name black male actors.

"There's a spot for a quality, leading-man-looking black actor," said Mr. George. Denzel Washington, Danny Glover, Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne, the black men who have dominated the screen since the 1980s, are aging out of certain types of roles. Mr. Elba is "a big enough guy that he can play action, and he's well-trained and versatile enough that he can also do comedy like he did on 'The Office,' " Mr. George said. "Idris is in a position to have that kind of career work for the next 15 to 20 years."

It also helps, Mr. George adds, that Mr. Elba has sex appeal. He tells about watching women react to Mr. Elba on a flight last month from Miami to New Orleans to attend the Essence Music Festival.

"I sat behind him in first class and in the course of a 90-minute flight -- actually, before the flight, during the flight, after the flight -- women, in coach, in first class, the stewardesses, were all over him," Mr. George said. He described how one particularly aggressive fan "elbows me out of the way" and chased after Mr. Elba to get his attention.

Mr. George says it doesn't matter whether Mr. Elba thinks he's a sex symbol. "I've seen how the women behave, I've heard the conversations. ... He doesn't have to understand it. Either you're sexy or you're not."

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