‘I understand the weight of being an Asian actor’
As his new film opens, Adeel Akhtar talks to Ben Lawrence about masculinity, middle age and the pressure of playing a Muslim on screen
‘At speech day, women in hats pulled strawberries and cream out of hampers. My parents had shish kebabs’
Adeel Akhtar has a face that you could stare at for hours. You might call it hangdog, but in those dark, rather tired eyes there is both a humanity and a sense of humour, a hint of irony and a sense of resignation. It’s a face that has served Akhtar well in the past few years: he’ll be familiar to TV audiences for roles in three highly acclaimed series; Unforgotten, The
Night Manager and BBC One’s psychological thriller River, and on film for his parts as Naveed in The Big Sick,
Smee in Joe Wright’s Pan and as a bumbling jihadist in his breakthrough role in Four Lions in 2010.
Last year, his reputation soared when he won a Best Actor Bafta for his devastating, all-consuming performance as a patriarch raging at his daughter’s disobedience to deadly effect in the BBC Three drama
Murdered by My Father, becoming the first non-white British actor to do so. I imagine that doors duly swung open, with Akhtar being allowed that rare chance to play a range of roles that are not specifically created for Asian actors.
“I am sitting down with people more – people are more interested in stuff I have to say: producers, directors, journalists. They want my perspective,” he says. He agrees stereotyping is less of an issue than it once was and points to his forthcoming role as Monsieur Thénardier, the villainous landlord, in Andrew Davies’s new adaptation of Les
Misérables, which will begin on the BBC in January next year. “It’s an amazing feeling and shows how far we have progressed. It’s gone from me not having a look in with something like that 10 years ago, to me being in it.”
We are meeting in the suite of a smart London hotel to talk about
Swimming With Men, a new British comedy directed by Oliver Parker which, in the style of The Full Monty, fully mines our appreciation of the underdog. Akhtar plays a member of a men’s synchronised swimming team who, against the odds, make it to the world championships. Rob Brydon’s depressed Eric uses his unlikely form of team bonding to win back his wife (Jane Horrocks), and the film says much about middle-aged anxiety, male friendship and a crisis in masculinity.
“The frayed edges of people are what we love seeing in this country,” says Akhtar. “It’s a very British trait to only give a crisis the amount of attention it really needs. The best response to low-grade depression is to pull focus and have fun. And it’s also a very British thing to do something in a way that is beneficial to the group.”
Akhtar is 37, and was born to firstgeneration immigrants – a Pakistani father and a Kenyan mother who met, rather romantically, at Heathrow Terminal 3. His father worked hard to retrain as an immigration lawyer and sent his son to Cheltenham College. He says of his time there: “When you are one of two or three brown people in your school, you learn to normalise your difference very quickly. That’s an amazing quality that kids have, I think. Only looking back do I think about [the differences]. I remember speech day and it was full of women in hats pulling strawberries and cream and champagne out of their hampers. My parents were there in traditional dress and when they opened up their hamper it was full of things like shish kebabs. Your differences are completely obvious, but you make it work.”
Akhtar’s father was determined that his son should follow him into law. He dutifully studied for a law degree at Oxford Brookes, but it made him unhappy. “I didn’t actively hate it, I was just doing what everyone else was doing, and trying to be sensible. But I found all the reading really difficult.”
In 2002, he followed his girlfriend of the time to America to audition for the Actors’ Studio. Akhtar had performed with the National Youth Theatre and loved it, thought it was the only thing he had ever been good at. He passed the audition, but en route was caught up in a life-changing incident. He had his passport taken away at Heathrow and was told he could pick it up in New York. However, on arrival, a fleet of FBI cars pulled up alongside the plane and he was arrested, wrongly suspected of terrorism.
It’s no wonder, then, that Akhtar says he found drama school to be “a refuge”. If there is any residual anger, he doesn’t show it, but there is no doubt that it made him think about his identity.
“As a British Asian man, the success I’ve had is off the back of a lot of stuff that has had a political context or a social context. I don’t have the luxury of taking it lightly. I consider playing a Muslim as I would any other part, but at the same time you do have to think about how a job affects a community of people, and I feel the effects of what it means symbolically to be an Asian actor in the industry. I understand what the weight of that is.”
He does, however, sound a note of caution. “There is a danger of being self-congratulatory about how far we’ve come and not really acknowledging certain stories.”
What he is saying, I think, is that we shouldn’t ignore the importance of ethnicity in casting.
“I am living this contradiction. I ask you to look through my differences so I can play a particular role, but at the same time I don’t want you to overlook my differences. I am in this strange, schizophrenic state trying to do two things at once. But weirdly, that is what my parents had to do when they first came to this country.”
His father, once so against his son’s chosen path, is now tacitly supportive. “Just realising he doesn’t have to worry about me is massive, particularly because he had to worry for such a long time when he was educating me.” For several years before Four Lions, Akhtar was somewhat aimless, desperately clinging on to his dreams, but also signing on, accepting bad clerical jobs and going out too much. “It was the only real outlet,” he says.
Now, he’s in demand. As well as
Swimming With Men and Les Misérables, there is a Hollywood film project, Murder Mystery, with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, and a rare venture into theatre, which is not yet confirmed. This would signify boom time for any actor, and yet Akhtar comes across as unambitious.
“You do think of jacking it in, that always happens, even when it is going really well. Look at Daniel Day-lewis – he has had a wonderful career, had his pick of parts. You always have that fear that no one is going to hire you again.” His spare time is spent looking after the two-year-old son he has with his wife, documentary director Alexis Burke, at their home in Camberwell in south London. I suspect that Akhtar doesn’t need anyone to keep him grounded, but perhaps Burke plays a role in that.
“She rolls her eyes when I say what I’ve been up to. She’s got a proper job.”
That could be his father speaking.
Swimming With Men is in cinemas from today. See review opposite.