Daniel Kaluuya Says Ashley Walters Inspired Him to Become an Actor Despite Being ‘Sidelined’ by the Industry: ‘You Get Defined by Your Mistakes, Especially if You’re Black’

Daniel Kaluuya discussed the early days of his career in a Screen Talk on the opening day of the BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday.

Speaking to fellow actor and close friend Ashley Walters (“Top Boy,” “Bulletproof,” “Get Rich of Die Tryin'”), the Oscar-winner took time to salute his Screen Talk host, someone he said had provided a major inspiration when he was just starting out in the mid-2000s.

It was seeing Walters’ face on the cover of a magazine while shopping in supermarket, Kaluuya said was the “moment I believed it could happen… I was like, ‘Oh, he looks like me.'”

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While Kaluuya may be one of the best known British actors working today — and one with a statue recently unveiled in his honor in central London — he said it was Walters work and success on screen that “really gave me the kind of belief” that a career as an actor was possibly, suggesting Walters had been “sidelined” by the industry and hadn’t got the credit he deserved.

“They’ve not really taken in your craft and your work and how hard it is to do what you’ve done,” he said. “I’m adamant, because you make mistakes in your life and you get defined by your mistakes, especially if you’re Black. You never get defined by your work if you’ve made a mistake.”

Many years later, Kaluuya’s said watching Benicio Del Toro on the set of “Sicario” changed his approach to acting, particularly in terms how his co-star would cut his lines in the script in favour of physically expressing what he was trying to convey. “He was just cutting, cutting, cutting, and was like, ‘I can show you.'”

Kaluuya said he then tried it himself in a scene, to which director Denis Villeneuve responded enthusiastically, and was later taken aback when he saw it back on screen. “I was really in awe of what [Del Toro] did.”

Another star Kaluuya says played a major role in shaping his career was the late Chadwick Boseman, who took Kaluuya to one side while they were making “Black Panther.” With his major Hollywood breakout “Get Out” about to launch, Boseman could see that “my life was changing, and I didn’t know.” And so, before Kaluuya even had a publicist, Boseman gave him advice on “what to say, what not to say, he really helped me out.”

Kaluuya premiered his directorial debut, “The Kitchen,” as the closing night gala of London Film Festival last year. He co-directed the sci-fi drama with Kibwe Tavares and co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Murtagh. It premiered to generally positive reviews and released on Netflix in January.

After breaking out in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” in 2017, Kaluuya starred in Marvel’s “Black Panther”; Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah,” for which he won the Oscar for best supporting actor; and Peele’s most recent directorial effort “Nope.” Kaluuya also lent his voice to 2023’s superhero sequel “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” as Spider-Punk, a role that he’s set to reprise in the franchise’s forthcoming third film, “Beyond the Spider-Verse.”

Elsewhere, Kaluuya has been attached to produce a feature film alongside Mattel Films based on the kids’ show “Barney & Friends” since 2019. As of last year, the film was still in development, with Mattel Films exec Kevin McKeon telling the New Yorker that the script was similar to an A24 movie and the “surrealistic” films from Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. 

“We’re leaning into the Millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids,” McKeon said at the time. “It’s really a play for adults. Not that it’s R-rated, but it’ll focus on some of the trials and tribulations of being 30-something, growing up with Barney — just the level of disenchantment within the generation.”