Riz Ahmed, rising star of Hollywood
The British Pakistani actor is smashing stereotypes while fast becoming one of his generation’s standout stars
HE PERFECTED an American accent, learned US sign language, spent two hours a day learning to play the drums like a pro and honed his body to rock-star perfection – and it all paid off when he made history.
Riz Ahmed became the first Muslim actor to be nominated for a best actor Oscar for his performance in Sound of Metal, a moving story about a heavy metal drummer and recovering heroin addict whose world is shattered when he loses his hearing. And while Riz may have lost out to Anthony Hopkins, whose portrayal of an old man descending into dementia beat the competition, he’d made his point: Riz has arrived.
Critics and fans have praised the British Pakistani actor for breaking stereotypes, but he remains modest.
“I think what’s really important is looking at the whole field of nominees and seeing there are so many firsts,” Riz says.
Korean actor Steven Yeun, nominated for Minari, was the first Asian-American nominee, while Anthony Hopkins was the eldest.
Riz made his red-carpet appearance with his wife, Fatima Farheen Mirza, a novelist, at a very different Oscars night, one without crowds and broadcast from several venues. Still, the couple made an impact. Fatima was elegant in a turquoise Valentino gown. Riz wanted to make sure she was looking her best for their big moment. As they began posing for the cameras, he asked the photographers to pause so he could fix her hair. “I’m the official groomer,” he quipped.
Riz is in a league of his own. “He’s a bit of a savant, like a supercomputer,” says Darius Marder, Sound of Metal’s director who spent years searching for the perfect actor for the role. Riz, he told the New York Times, has a fearsome intellect that keeps him awake at night “like an obsessive psychopath”. Darius saw that intellect and obsession as both an asset to the
movie and a challenge.
“I felt if he were to build such a solid foundation for this character that he could let go of that incredibly adept frontal lobe of his and just trust his instincts, then there was a performance that could be truly transcendent.”
He did, and it was. His nuanced performance takes viewers to the depths of Ruben Stone’s despair, showing his panic and horror as he loses the one sense he values above everything else.
“The deaf community taught me what it means to listen,” Riz says. “They taught me about the physicality of signing, of using the whole body as an expressive tool.”
“He’s never been more emotionally expressive than when communicating through sign language”, the Guardian wrote.
THE intensity of his performances are rooted in a background of discrimination and feeling like an outsider. Riz’s dad was a shipping broker who moved his family to England from Karachi, Pakistan, in the 1970s. As a Muslim kid growing up in Wembley, London, Riz battled to fit in.
“I’ve grown up, gone through my own life, understanding that when you enter this room, you’ve got to leave that other part of yourself at the door,” he says.
“For a long time, I thought that contorting myself, wearing these different masks and popping up as this or that person might be a way of stretching culture.”
But Riz had brains – plenty of them. He won a scholarship to a private school in London before going to Oxford University where he studied philosophy, politics and economics.
Yet he’d always been drawn to the arts. Riz fell in love with hiphop as a 10-year-old, reciting lyrics from his older brother’s hidden stash of Wu-Tang Clan records. “In immigrant families, kids are discouraged from pursuing careers in the arts,” he says.
“But the one thing we have is our culture – our music, our food, our costume. Every immigrant is in a way our costume. You’re building something from nothing.”
His love for the spoken word saw him rapping and freestyling in the London underground scene as a youth. Later, he put out songs under the pseudonym Riz MC and recently released The Long Goodbye, a half-hour performance piece about racism in Britain, under his own name.
While music allows him to express himself, acting lets him to hide behind a character. After Oxford, Riz attended the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and starred in a string of indie films before landing his break-out role with Jake Gyllenhaal in the 2014 thriller Nightcrawler.
In 2016 he starred in hit series The Night Of, playing a New York murder suspect. The role really put him on the map. Riz won the best actor award for his performance at the 2017 Emmy Awards – making him the first Muslim and first Asian to win a lead actor Emmy.
RIZ’S rise to stardom hasn’t been without challenges. At first he was only offered the stereotypical roles of Muslim terrorists. Then he decided he’d confine himself to roles that worked for him. “A lot of my early work deals with the issues around the war on terror or Islamophobia, but I’m proud to say it deals with and engages those issues in creative ways – I hope in ways that move us forward rather than doubling down on lazy stereotypes.”
Riz has used his personal experiences to fuel his other passions: activism and philanthropy. In 2016 he started a campaign to raise funds for Syrian refugees and in 2017 he addressed Britain’s House of Commons on the lack of diversity in film and TV.
He’s also been raising awareness about the displacement of the predominantly Muslim Rohingya people of Myanmar.
Still, the thought of “I could be doing more, being more productive, doing more of the things that matter” keeps him awake at night.
Fortunately, his wife helps him make sense of it all. The couple, who are based in California, tied the knot in a backyard wedding during lockdown last year after romantic Riz proposed over a picnic in the park.
“She loves a bit of Scrabble,” he told US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. “We were actually playing Scrabble and I did that corny thing where I stole all the correct letters up and spelled out, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”
Unlike most traditional Muslim weddings, theirs was a small affair. “No disrespect to the aunties, but Asian weddings are big,” Riz says. “You always get these people crawling out of the woodwork who I think are probably imposters. They smell the kebabs and just wander in.”
Jokes aside, his work is serious business and it’s helping him change the face of entertainment – one movie at a time.
IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES, KIDS ARE DISCOURAGED FROM PURSUING CAREERS IN THE ARTS