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Idris Elba has been highly-praised for a wide range of roles throughout the years, from Luther on the iconic British drama series of the same name to Stringer Bell in the massively acclaimed HBO police drama The Wire (2002). Following a comedic stint on The Office (2005), a turn as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013), and tackling sci-fi and fantasy with Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Pacific Rim (2013), Elba has returned to the realm of serious drama with Beasts of No Nation (2015), Cary Fukunaga’s war drama about child soldiers fighting an unidentified African civil war. As The Commadant, a predatory psychopath warped by war and convinced of the necessity of his work, Elba is the leader of a ragtag band of child soldiers, simultaneously filling the role of father, teacher, dictator and slaver for those under his command.

The film required Elba to develop a character that was brutish and powerful. The character is easily despicable, a man who abducts innocent children into his army, teaches them to crack open skulls with machetes, and rapes them, all while posing as their mentor and father figure and making them believe he has saved their lives. He fills their minds with propaganda and tells them who they are, training them to be obedient to his wishes. Yet despite the character’s heinous actions and unspeakable behavior, the Commandant evokes pity and interest thanks to Elba’s artful performance.

As the actor told Variety, he took the role because the story is—unfortunately—accessible. “It makes you think, ‘Wow, this could happen to me or my child.’ It doesn’t feel like it’s a million miles away. It doesn’t feel like this is just a problem for Africa. It feels like children are susceptible to being led down the river— whether it’s ISIS, whether it’s any sort of organization that is using youth culture to strengthen their ideas. Children are vulnerable.”

Beasts of No Nation takes place in an unnamed country, in part to avoid associations any specific government or conflict, but also to make it thematically universal. For Elba, this lack of contextual specificity meant he had to bring a more developed foundation to his own character. Speaking to Rolling Stone about creating a three-dimensional man in a two-dimensional, generic setting, Elba said, “It made me want to humanize him more. Cary and I spoke about this endlessly. There was a lot of ‘Cary, I’m not sure if I should do this. I can’t make him another 2-D dictator type…’ And his answer was, ‘We’ve seen that guy already. Now let’s see the charismatic war commander. Let’s see the guy that Agu sees as kind of hero, as a savior when he first meets him.’ Think about it, this kid is scared shitless, he’s alone in the jungle, then this man comes and kneels down to him, eye to eye, and says, ‘I’m the group leader, who’s going to be in my group? Who’s going to be my strong boys?’ The language Commandant uses…he says, ‘Agu, I saved your life.’ Did he? Really?!? That’s an interesting thing. He’s not saying the word kidnapped, it’s ‘I just saved you. You’re going to be one of the greatest soldiers in the world. Come on! You want a gun like this? Let’s go.’ He’s almost like an Eagle Scout leader! There’s a lot of real estate in the film to hate somebody, especially this guy. But anyone can play mustache-twiddling evil, you know? It’s tougher to play someone like this as a human being. Because then you can’t just dismiss that person. You have to confront him.” This complex, dangerous humanity is exactly what Elba achieves on screen —The Commandant is a twisted father-like demon whose rhetoric is so persuasive that he seems to have started to believe it himself.

To study the psychology of the character, Elba turned to prominent real and fictional dictators of the past. “I did look at the common denominators in dictator-type characters: What was the thread of all of these people? How are they so successful? How did Hitler manage to do what he did? I wanted to study and understand that, and it turns out that charisma and being a sociopath are interestingly linked.”

Of Elba’s performance in the film, director Cary Fukunaga told EW, “The guy has gravitas. You can’t deny it. Whether you see him on screen or meet him in person, he’s just one of those people who moves the room. I needed to find somebody for this role that you didn’t just hate, that you could understand not only their motivations, but how people could be attracted to them. By no means is this a Kony story. This is not trying to be anything about the Lord’s Resistance Army. It’s about natural leadership in places of conflict and those people who would have been political leaders in another life or another country where upward mobility was somehow easier. Here’s somebody who found his own way and obviously did terrible things, but you could still understand who he was and not just be villainized. I thought with Idris, whether in his role as Stringer Bell on The Wire or as Mandela, there’s always multiple levels to the character there. He’s somehow able to communicate through his acting. That’s a rare skill, and there’s a small set of people in this world who have that.”

In Beasts of No Nation Elba manages to create a nuanced, emotionally truthful portrait of charismatic brutality. His commitment to the role and the project are exceptional, and he consistently brings a depth to his characters that is studied, controlled, and exceptionally powerful.