Riz Ahmed

Riz Ahmed is a British actor and rapper. He was born in Wembley, London, to a British Pakistani family whose parents moved to England from Karachi in the 1970s. He studied acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. In 2017 Time named him one of the most influential people in the world.

He started in independent film with The Road to Guantanamo (2006), Shifty (2008), Four Lions (2010), Trishna (2011) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012). Nightcrawler (2014) was his breakout, and in 2016 he appeared in Jason Bourne and Rogue One. As a young man accused of murder in HBO's The Night Of (2016), he won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series. He played Carlton Drake in Venom (2018). Playing a drummer who loses his hearing in Sound of Metal (2019) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

His music career runs alongside his acting. He raps with the Swet Shop Boys, and his song “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” from The Hamilton Mixtape won an MTV Video Music Award. The short film made with his album The Long Goodbye won him the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He also produced, co-wrote and starred in Mogul Mowgli (2020), which was nominated for the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film.

He went to Merchant Taylors' School on a scholarship and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church, Oxford. His first film role was Shafiq Rasul, one of the Tipton Three, in Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantánamo. The film won a Silver Bear in Berlin. On his return he was detained and questioned at Luton Airport. He has described that questioning as hostile.