Idris Elba - the British star of Molly’s Game, Luther and The Wire - has announced his engagement to his girlfriend
Sabrina Dhowre.
Elba, 45, asked the beauty queen to marry him while the pair were on stage at a screening of his latest film Yardie at the Rio cinema, in Dalston, east London, on Saturday morning.
Staff at the cinema could not resist sharing the couple's happy news with their 18,000 Twitter followers, writing on the social media site: “Another @Riocinemafirst! Still 5 days to Valentines Day but @idriselba went down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend live on stage this morning before a preview of his film #Yardie.”
Elba and Miss Dhowre, who won Miss Vancouver in 2014, began seeing each other last year, dating for several months before coming out in public in September.
The engagement comes despite Elba recently suggesting he was unlikely to marry again.
In July last year he told ESSENCE magazine “Am I ever gonna get remarried? I don’t think so. Yeah, I don’t think so. Marriage is an institution of sorts. And I’ve done it. It’s not for everybody. It’s not my life’s calling.”
His relationship with Miss Dhowre is understood to be his first since he separated from Naiyana Garth, a make-up artist with whom he has a three-year-old son, Winston.
Elba, who was born in Hackney, east London, was previously married to Hanne Norgaard, with whom he has a teenage daughter, Isan, but they seperated in 2003.
Yardie, a Jamaican term for gangster, is a British crime thriller adapted from the 1993 novel of the same name by Victor Headley, and is Elba’s directorial debut.
He said of the film: “It's about a boy who comes from Jamaica and finds himself in London, being a naughty boy. Because it's called Yardie you might expect it to be a violent film, and to some degree it is, but it's got a human heart and soul.”