Toronto, Sep 14 (IANS): Actor Jamie Foxx says he tried to talk actor Idris Elba out of doing "Django Unchained", because he was interested in the 2012 Quentin Tarantino project.

During a session at the Toronto International Film Festival, Foxx confessed that he badly wanted to work with Tarantino, reports "etcanada.com".

Foxx was disturbed when he got to know that he was not on the shortlist of actors for "Django" after Will Smith had passed on the part, and Elba was rumoured to in contention. In fact, when he got the chance to meet Elba, he tried to deter the actor from taking the lead part.

Foxx told Elba that his good looks would be a distraction for the audience.

"Your beautiful black a** riding up on a horse, there's going to be some problems for everyone," Foxx recalls telling Elba.

However, Tarantino decided against casting Elba for a specific reason.

"Yeah, Idris is British and this is an American story," Tarantino said in an interview in 2013, adding: "I think a problem with a lot of movies that deal with this issue is they cast British actors to play the Southerners and it goes a long way to distancing the movie. They put on their gargoyle masks and they do their accents and you are not telling an American story anymore."

"Django Unchained" features Jamie Foxx with Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson.