The 41-year-old actor, who plays the late South African president Nelson Mandela in the biopic about his life, spent four hours per day in the cosmetics chair before filming while professionals applied prosthetics, reported Contactmusic.
"I had four hours every day sitting in the chair from 6am. It was tough. I'm normally five minutes in the make-up chair. I was shocked. We did a really interesting journey designing the prosthetics," Elba said.
"I look nothing like Nelson Mandela so it was more Idris actually ageing than Idris turning into Mandela. What came of it was the older we played Mandela, the more I started to look like him, the more the voice, the characteristics and the walk started to come into play," he added.