Idris Elba views his work as “therapy time”

He said: “No doubt about it, [my favourite characters] tend to deal with emotional battles, a lot of suppression, a lot of dualities.

“The roles I take tend to have that complexity, and I enjoy diving into them, because, yeah, this is therapy time.

“A lot of times I read something in a script and I think, ‘I’m secretly dealing with that.’

And the 48-year-old actor admitted he wonders if his approach could be viewed as cheating as he doesn’t necessarily feel that he’s having to act.

He told the Guardian Weekend magazine: “If you’re only dealing with certain facets of your own personality, is that really acting?

“People sometimes tell me, ‘You were good in this or that role’, and I think, ‘You don’t realise. I was dealing with that shit for real’.”

Idris particularly identified with the pressures felt by Stringer Bell in ‘The Wire’ and admitted he signed on to play titular cop John Luther because the appeal of ‘Luther’ was to play a character in a troubled midlife time when he was also feeling disillusioned about his own work.

He admitted: “I definitely used work to exorcise demons, there’s no doubt about that.”

One tough project to film for the actor has been ‘In the Long Run’, a comedy series based on his own childhood in which he plays his father, Winston Elba, who died of cancer in 2013.

Idris said: “He would have loved the show. He had a wicked sense of humour, really at ease at taking the p**s out of you, and taking the p**s out of himself, all in the same breath… Man, talk about work as therapy,. I have to say, there were some tough moments for me on set. I would break down.”