I was so broke I almost gave up on acting
Oscar hopeful Riz on rags-to-riches rise
OSCAR nominee Riz Ahmed has revealed he was once so skint he almost turned his back on showbiz.
The Brit nearly pulled out of his audition for 2014 breakthrough movie Nightcrawler because he couldn’t afford the plane fare.
Riz, nominated for best actor for Sound Of Metal, said: “They asked me to fly to LA. I was like, ‘I can’t fly to LA. I’m broke’.
“But I had to fly to LA – and just bet on myself. I spent that whole flight just running lines. I remember landing and seeing Jake Gyllenhaal in the room and going, ‘Whoa’.
“It came when I thought I’d reached the end of the road. I wasn’t really making any money, being offered that next tier of roles.
CHALLENGING
“I just felt earning a couple of grand for a movie? I can’t live like this. I’m not going to be able to move forward or start a family.
“And Nightcrawler just came to me. It was like a bit of a Hail Mary. And it ended up really opening some doors.”
In Sound Of Metal, also up for best film, London-born Riz plays Ruben Stone, a punk metal drummer who loses his hearing.
Riz, 38, added: “I spent that period playing the drums every day and learning American sign language every day. It was immersive. It was challenging. It was daunting. But it was a tremendous privilege, you know. I feel like it opened me up in new ways.”
He studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford – where posh students likened him to Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Ali G. Riz would have the last laugh – setting up a club night, acting in plays
and going on to make his name in movies such as Four Lions, where he plays a terrorist, and Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Now he lands roles not connected to his race and feels there has been a “shift” in racial awareness within Hollywood. He said: “Starting out I was very aware of how few Muslim or how few brown actors there might have been out there in these post 9/11 times in this circus of fear.
“Things are shifting. There has been a bit of a wake-up call. There is this moment now where some kind of shift has taken place.”
I was paid a couple of grand per movie.. I couldn’t go on like that RIZ AHMED REVEALING HIS CASH STRUGGLES