Riaze Foster: What’s Confirmed About Idris Elba’s Son
The barber Idris Elba trusted with his hair — and, it turns out, his son. Here's what's actually on record.
For years, nobody outside Idris Elba’s circle knew Riaze Foster existed. Then, in 2023, Elba mentioned in a YOU magazine interview that he had an adult son he’d kept out of the public eye. He didn’t give a name. It took a while for the pieces — the barber credits, the Yardie acting role, the family resemblance — to add up to one person.
Quick answer: Riaze Foster is Idris Elba’s eldest son, born around December 1992. He’s a professional barber who has worked as Elba’s personal groomer on productions including Luther: The Fallen Sun and Heads of State, and he acted alongside his father in the 2018 film Yardie. Elba confirmed the relationship publicly in 2023; before that, Foster was essentially unknown.
What Elba and Foster have actually said
Most “secret son” stories run on speculation. This one has something better: on-record quotes. Elba told YOU magazine in 2023 that he’d fathered a son he preferred not to “put out there,” describing him only as 31 at the time. Foster has since spoken to The Hub about working alongside his father on Yardie, saying it “felt really good to work with my ol’ man” and that Elba, as both actor and director, “knew exactly how to get the best from his actors.” Elba, in turn, has talked about handing over grooming duties to his son: “I started cutting my hair when I started trusting him to cut it… I wanted to support him, and he wanted to prove that he could do it really well.”
That’s a rare thing in celebrity-family coverage — the relationship confirmed by both people involved, not inferred from a resemblance or a red-carpet photo. (Though there’s a red-carpet photo too: the two were photographed together at the Gladiator II premiere.)
The barber-to-crew-credit pipeline
Foster’s professional path runs through grooming, not drama school. IMDb credits him as makeup department or “personal barber: Mr. Elba” on Beast (2022), Extraction II (2023), Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023), Heads of State (2025), and the TV series Hijack (2026). That’s not a small list — it means he’s been on set for most of Elba’s major film and TV work over the past several years, in a role that requires the production’s trust as much as any acting job would.
The acting side is thinner but real: his credited role in Yardie is the clearest, best-documented one, since it’s tied directly to working with his father. TV Guide and Plex both also list credits for him in Top Boy and Death in Paradise, though I couldn’t independently pin down character names for those roles beyond what’s listed on IMDb, so treat the specific parts as less firmly confirmed than the Yardie credit.
The business side
Foster also runs a UK limited company. Companies House records show RIAZEBLADE LTD (company number 14124114) as active, incorporated 23 May 2022, with Riaze Anthony Foster listed as director. His officer filing gives a date of birth of December 1992 — a public record detail, not a guess, though it only specifies month and year, not the exact day.
What’s still not confirmed
A few things get repeated across fan pages and celebrity-bio sites that don’t hold up against sourcing:
- His mother’s identity — never named in any of the reporting I could find, including Hello!’s otherwise detailed family piece
- Exact birthday — only month and year are on public record
- Net worth — no reliable figure exists; anything citing a specific dollar number is a guess dressed up as data
- Character names for his Top Boy/Death in Paradise credits — listed on aggregator sites but not something I could verify precisely
Given how many near-identical AI-generated “biography” pages exist about him — most repeating the same three or four facts with padded filler about his “quiet confidence” and “striking appearance” — it’s worth being explicit about the gap between what’s sourced and what’s just been repeated often enough to sound true.
Why this is worth knowing
The interesting part of Foster’s story isn’t a checklist of credits — it’s that he had a functioning, trusted professional relationship with one of Britain’s most recognizable actors for years before anyone knew they were related. The grooming work came first; the public acknowledgment came much later, and on Elba’s terms. That’s a different story from the usual “celebrity’s secret child” framing, and it’s the one actually backed by on-record quotes.
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