There’s a hilltop in Uzbekistan where Chiwetel Ejiofor sometimes goes to think.
It’s a peaceful place, somewhere he can have a moment – take stock, as we all do every now and again. “There’s a mountain range, a lake and an open field, and it’s absolutely stunning,” Ejiofor says. “For some reason I just feel something there.”
It’s become his safe place, this hilltop. A solace away from the world, a space where he can go to exorcise his heaviest thoughts, to manifest positivity and progress. But the truth is he doesn’t even know where it is. “I was bouncing around the world a few years ago on Wander and just hit upon this place,” he says.
Wander is an Oculus virtual reality app. Ejiofor initially downloaded it during lockdown as a way of connecting with family (“my mum joined us at one point”) but it soon grew into something else. “Now every time I go, I tend to put on some music, sit on a rug like I’m picnicking and just lie down with my VR headset. It’s very relaxing, my Zen place.”
If you didn’t already know this about Chiwetel Ejiofor, the actor is a deep and interesting thinker, someone for whom meditating in virtual reality seems only natural. He craves information, and likes to question things, large and small. And right now he’s thinking about: what does it mean, his journey to this hilltop? Does travelling to an Uzbekistani hilltop in virtual reality somehow diminish our experiences of what’s real? “Do we lose that sense of excitement and thrill as a consequence of experiences devolving into things we’ve seen before?” Ejiofor pauses. “Like, where do we take technology like VR so it can actually facilitate a real expansion of our conscious thought and our interactions with other people, in a positive atmosphere?”
If you are unaware of this side of Chiwetel Ejiofor – Ejiofor the philosopher – then you will no doubt be familiar with his many other facets. Theatregoers will know him for his legendary runs in Othello at the Donmar and Romeo and Juliet at the National; film buffs for bringing an unmistakeable gravitas and vulnerability to a career that has taken in everything from Oscar-winning drama (12 Years a Slave) to comedy (Love Actually, Kinky Boots) to CGI lions (the Lion King remake). More recently, there is Ejiofor the screenwriter and director (2019’s The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind). And now there’s Ejiofor the blockbuster draw, throwing up magical signs as Mordo in Marvel’s Doctor Strange.
On screen, there is an intensity to Ejiofor’s performances, a rawness that has attracted some of our finest directors: McQueen, Spielberg, Scott, Cuarón, Lee. Among actors, Ejiofor is known as someone who insists on going that extra yard – or hundred, as his 12 Years a Slave co-star Alfre Woodard recalls from their time on the 2013 Steve McQueen film. “In one scene he came running full speed from 300m away and arrived heaving, drenched in sweat, eyes ablaze,” Woodard says. “He was so spent it shocked me out of character!” (Ejiofor did three more rehearsals at that intensity before shooting started.)
“What makes Chiwetel such a great actor is his razor-sharp intellect and the tremendous hard work and preparation he always puts in,” the actor Naomie Harris tells me. “No one is ever better prepared or has greater insight into their character and the project than him.”
But in person, there’s a playful side to Ejiofor that only a few people get to see. “He is always the first person to lighten the atmosphere as well as dive into whatever is required of a moment. Even if he’s laughing at his own jokes, you can’t help but join in,” says his Doctor Strange co-star Benedict Cumberbatch. “Chiwetel always wins people over, whether he’s stepping in for a day of high-octane fighting or a heavy dialogue scene. But to say there’s one thing about his personality that makes him great would do a disservice to the rich, complex and deep human being and talent that he truly is.”
They say a sign of wisdom is knowing what you don’t know, and Ejiofor is all too aware of what he doesn’t know. Some things you probably didn’t know about Ejiofor are as follows: he is now 44. His go-to karaoke song is Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”. His favoured pet is a dog (his is a Pyrenean Shepherd called Clay), his favoured emoji the eagle (he’s a fan of Crystal Palace). He’s a two cups of coffee per day person, max. He can “more or less” change a fuse, but is still not fully comfortable with Zoom calls. He has read the Bible (in parts as a child growing up Roman Catholic, and in full for the part of a preacher in 2018’s Come Sunday) and thinks it’s important to encourage what is positive about religious teaching.
He was desperate to be older when he was young and now is slightly resentful of getting older. He’s a lover of nature and is into the idea, if not the practice, of hugging trees, “because of the exchange of energies that happens.” And right now, at a Daylesford Organic in West London, he’s just changed his order of scrambled eggs on toast for creamed mushrooms with a soft boiled egg. A green tea, too, because at 9.50am he’s already reached his coffee quota for the day.
“It’s such a complex world and a complex time,” Ejiofor says, as if it explains Uzbekistan. “Although that can be challenging, it’s also a great opportunity to figure out what you want to say and how you want to involve yourself in the conversations that are happening. That’s where I’m at right now. I just want to carry on finding the notes of the music I want to play, you know?”
Ejiofor grew up in south London. His mother and father, who had moved to the UK in the 1960s to flee the Biafran war, sent him to the private Dulwich College, which is where he came across acting. The school’s theatre soon became a sacred space. It was during a school production of Measure for Measure when Ejiofor realised that acting could be a space for telling the truth. (Ejiofor, in Igbo, means truthfulness.) “I remember all the sexual politics, the frustrations, the humiliations and all these dynamics at play in that play, and thinking as a teenager it’s incredible because these conversations bubble under the surface but are not explicitly talked about, yet through the lens of theatre you can openly express them.”
When Ejiofor was 11, he and his family went to Nigeria for a family wedding. Ejiofor and his father, Arinze (Igbo for ‘Thank God’) were driving along the motorway when their car collided with a truck. Ejiofor, left with broken bones and in a coma, was the only survivor. He bears a scar from the accident across his forehead.
I tell him that I, too, lost my father suddenly at a young age. “Grief is something you live with forever in different ways,” he says, looking straight into my eyes. “When you lose a parent young, it has a profound effect on the way you view life. At an early age you realise the value of some things and the preciousness of life itself, which is something most people acquire later on. Certain fears or neuroses you definitely carry. Some are justified but you do lose a lot of ideas about knowledge.” He pauses.
“I don’t know if it was due to my father passing away, but I have gaps in my knowledge that I have to acquire for myself as I go through the journey of life.”
I talk about my father and he listens, careful to let me say my piece. With loss comes many side effects, which we compare at length. I wonder what the loss has done to his confidence. “I think neurosis is a more creative space [than confidence] but it can be paralysing,” he says. “Those little fears you pick up along the way grow into such major branches of your personality, and they define the ways you approach things. But such fears are just an illusion you’re creating. I have been lucky enough to break some of the fears I had – and when you do, you recognise your genuine path and personality in a richer, deeper way.”
Ejiofor’s mother, Obiajulu (Igbo for ‘my heart is at peace’) still lives in West Norwood, as do many of his mates and school friends. “I have very solid ties to that side of town and love being around Selhurst Park – I just love the atmosphere there,” he says. Ejiofor loves football. Crystal Palace has always been his team. Right now they are in good form, about which he is delighted: “It’s exciting to be watching really good top-flight football again.”
His other footballing love is Nigeria (the Super Eagles). Ejiofor is proud of his African heritage, as much as he is British. When England play Nigeria, who does he support? “It’s like choosing between parents, isn’t it?” he says. “I have a lot of strong connections to both places so I always think it’s an addition to your psychology and cultural perspective as opposed to taking something from one place and engaging somewhere else.”
In 2007, I was one of the people who queued for hours to see Ewan McGregor and Ejiofor in Othello at the Donmar Warehouse. I remember being stunned by Ejiofor’s performance, which was deservedly recognised with the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor. The beauty of seeing him on stage is there’s no hiding from his intensity. His delivery of the line “Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial”, has remained with me right up until we meet. This time I am slightly closer than row three.
We talk about Shakespeare. There’s a line in Hamlet – “Give every man thy ear but few thy voice” – that has been taken to mean “Listen to many, speak to few.” I ask if he prefers to speak or listen. He pauses to consider the question. “I like to listen, but only when I can’t speak,” he smiles. “I love to listen in a form where somebody’s explaining something and there’s no way of interacting. But if I can engage myself by interjecting then I sometimes can’t resist that. You don’t want to die with the music in you – you’ve got to get it out.”
Nearly a decade has passed since Ejiofor’s seminal performance in 12 Years a Slave. As important as critical acclaim and awards are – the film won three Oscars – the long-term impact of that film continues to bear fruit. “[Its] overall cultural significance was incredibly powerful and continues to resonate,” he says. Not only did it rejuvenate a conversation around Black-centric cinema that had stagnated in the 2010s, Ejiofor believes it led to a variety of films being greenlit that would never have been made. “There’s an argument that part of the success of 12 Years led to the decision to push forward Black Panther,” he adds.
“If you look at the films made before and after 12 Years you’ll see the difference,” Steve McQueen, that film’s director and a friend of Ejiofor, tells me. “The film changed the industry and Chiwetel was a huge part of that. The fact that a film about slavery with a Black lead and supporting actors had critical success and made money in the U.S. and globally made it possible for more diverse films with Black stories to be made.
“I will never forget someone in the industry telling me that films with Black leads don’t sell internationally,” adds McQueen. “Chiwetel helped to change that misconception.”
“Historically, we’ve watched from a distance stories set during the enslavement of Africans in the Americas,” Woodard tells me by email. “But Chiwetel’s patient unfolding of the free man Solomon Northup’s slide into bondage allows no such safety. Instead, we are forced to take that descent, experiencing the terror and ultimately the ‘triumph’, with him.”
Ejiofor is himself now enmeshed in the Marvel universe, returning in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (in cinemas on 5 May). Once upon a time, Ejiofor – Shakespeare purist, dramatic force – might have seemed an odd fit for the MCU. But he was into comics as a kid: “All the Alan Moore stuff, Watchmen and 2000AD, when it was always quite niche and nerdy, so it’s been fascinating to see the expansion of that,” he says.
Despite also loving theatre as a kid, Ejiofor never had any concept of combining the two, nor the world of interconnected, multi-platform mega-franchises and straight-to-streaming spin-offs. “The theatre was my universe when I fell in love with acting and even film and TV seemed so removed from where I was at,” he says. “I wouldn’t have even been able to imagine the world as it is now.”
There is little that we know about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Ejiofor is resistant to spoilers). For many fans, the most promising factor is the return of horror maestro Sam Raimi, whose original Spider-Man trilogy laid the groundwork for today’s comic book franchises.
“Sam is embedded in the lore and creation of this genre,” says Ejiofor. “As I think Scott [Derrickson, director of the first Doctor Strange] said, it was really exciting that Sam was coming in as a legendary figure in his own right and it felt like such a strong match for Doctor Strange’s own mercurial energy. There’s something very layered about the work that Sam does. It’s deep but he always maintains this kind of mystery and slightly magical quality that sits perfectly within this film.”
I ask him how he feels about the spoiler culture that swirls around every Marvel project. He smiles. “It seems so perverse to me,” his smile broadens. “I never understand why people want to spoil a movie, or why you would want to engage with it, which will inevitably spoil your entertainment of the film. It speaks to the impatience in us I think.”
Ejiofor is less interested in the rumour mill and more excited to explore what the success of Marvel’s films can tell us about ourselves. “The dynamics in the fantasy world are also in our world,” he says. “Fantasy is so rich at being able to set a tone for those things that have a subliminal engagement with our consciousness and our lived experiences. I think we’re deeply influenced by them, in terms of the hormones that are released. Watching something that we’re so engaged with bodes the question of how we then chase the feelings of thrill, excitement and satisfaction in our own lives. Right from the start, fantasy has played this dual game, which is why it’s so engaging.”
There’s something Shakespearean in Karl Mordo, Ejiofor’s character, a hero who turned against his friends at the end of the last Doctor Strange for breaking what he saw as an immutable moral code. Ejiofor is fascinated by people who are motivated by a sense that they’re doing the right thing, even if that turns out to be complicated. “Karl [Mordo] holds in himself all of these personal, slightly dark jealousies and complexities that he’s ashamed of, which are very natural human instincts, so that psychology is quite accessible.”
Ejiofor the philosopher is back. We discuss motivation, and whether humans are addicted to status. “We love to have something over other people, we love to have a sense of elevation, and because we refuse to acknowledge our love of status it becomes much more insidious in our day-to-day operations and the way we deal with each other,” he says. “To the point where most of the world’s conflicts are somehow generated by this need for status.”
Ejiofor’s next project is playing the lead in The Man Who Fell To Earth, Showtime’s new 10-part TV version of David Bowie’s classic 1976 film. Ejiofor found filming the series challenging, he says, although in a good way. (Given that his opening lines are “How did we get here? To this place?” quickly followed by “I am an immigrant, a refugee. To survive I had to be reborn”, it’s easy to see why.) “There was a lot to try to achieve in terms of the arc of this character and his journey. To keep it grounded but to allow it to be heightened was tough because I am playing a character that is evolving. It’s quite complicated because of the richness of the language and the ideas from [creators] Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet.”
The first time Ejiofor read Othello, he says, he was struck by how Shakespeare was writing about a Black general in the Venetian army. A man respected, blessed with authority, dynamism and romance, yet who ends up being undermined by a white man. “Shakespeare was writing free of the over-politicisation of race, the introduction of racial hierarchy and the common culture that came as a result of slave trading and colonialism,” he says. “Nowadays, it’s incredibly rare for a white author to write about a Black person like Shakespeare did in Othello, in an empowered way. It is a shame that so much of Britain’s colonial history and understanding of racial politics is brushed over in school curriculums because people should be allowed to come to their own conclusions based on an informed understanding of history or literature of one’s own country. That is a tragedy for any community.”
We’re talking as we approach the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Ejiofor has always been very vocal on the fight for racial equality and in 2020 he was one of many actors to sign an open letter calling for an end to racism in the UK entertainment industry. I want to know if he thinks the industry has changed. “I’m happy and excited by the nature of conversation, the opening up of conversation. I think we all have to allow each other to come to the conference of ideas, and to try to make real changes in the world. And I think the understanding of how we change in our interactions with each other is going to affect how we change in our interactions with the planet at large,” he says.
“Progress is going to take the time it takes. We’re looking at 300 to 400 years of programming in the western world to basically despise people of darker skin colour. I mean, it has been part of the DNA and the structuring of the western world, and the nature of what is required to deprogramme some of those energies is not an overnight thing,” says Ejiofor.
He knows that actors have influence, both in their audiences and their access to the political class. Ejiofor was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008 for services to the arts (upgraded to a CBE in 2015) and politics is not something he shies away from. “It’s going to take a sustained generational effort to deprogramme these ideas of racial hierarchy, but BLM has been a very successful campaign to get the west to think in a certain way. And a lot of the west has tried to remove some of that programming. But it’s a long and arduous process because certain people cling to it in a very fervent way.”
These are the kind of things he thinks about: the problems the world faces, whether one person can ever make a difference, how he can use his influence, as it is, to make positive change. “We are surrounded by negative outcomes because we have systems that ultimately push for negativity,” he says. “These systems were created in a completely different time to the one we live in now. For example, we inherit these conditions of geography, place, time, history, and there are simply socio-political reasons why we hold onto them but I don’t think there is any real need for nation states as a concept.
“The way we’re educated often escalates some of these feelings that have no real merit, and only continue to create division in our discourse. There was a time when these structures created extraordinary wealth for a limited number of individuals, and that’s why they were enforced as an idea. But we’re past that time. Now we as people collectively need to embrace moving past the idea of nationality,” says Ejiofor. He pauses for his last mouthful of mushrooms on toast, but he’s on a roll.
“I was born in London in the late ’70s, and that on paper means x, y, and z, but the question for me is does it need to continue to be something that we collectively engage with? Is there a way of de-escalating concepts of nationalism and elevating the idea that we’re all connected, we’re one human race, and these things” – nations, he means – “are like a football team. These things are not things to fight over. They’re not things to kill over. They’re not things to destroy other people and their lives over. They are simply inherited labels that are ultimately completely meaningless.” He never explicitly mentions the war in Ukraine, although it’s clearly on his mind.
The waitress hovers to collect our plates and I’m surprised to see hours have passed since we sat down. This is what it’s like to be around Ejiofor; there is no real downtime with him. He’s always engaged, always questioning, always trying to work out what he doesn’t know.
I ponder what he’d said about how when you lose someone you feel like you’re missing some secret they might have told you. “Part of the prolonged sense of grieving is holding on to things you think you missed out on, whether they are true or not,” Ejiofor says. “You can’t get to the bottom of that but, in a sense, that’s not the point. The point is you want to keep the feeling alive of care and of love and connection.”
There’s still a lot he has to learn. But he has figured out one thing. “As you get older you find out the secret knowledge isn’t really secret. It’s just that you haven’t accessed it yet.”
Mike Christensen is GQ's European Lifestyle Editor.
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Sharif Hamza
Styled by Luke Day
Grooming by Carlos Ferraz
Set Design by King Owusu
