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Riz Ahmed
British Pakistani actor, rapper and activist, renowned for challenging stereotypes, advocating for Muslim representation and exploring themes of identity and cultural conflict in his work
Other names
Rizwan Ahmed
Riz MC
Place of birth
About
Riz Ahmed, an award-winning British Pakistani actor, rapper, writer, producer and activist, was born in Wembley, north London to Pakistani immigrant parents. He was raised in a multilingual household where Urdu was spoken before he learned English at school. Ahmed, a gifted student, attended the prestigious Merchant Taylors’ School on a scholarship before studying philosophy, politics and economics at Christ Church, Oxford. He has openly discussed feeling alienated at university, highlighting the social and cultural barriers that made him feel like an outsider, stating he felt 'too poor, too brown, too Muslim' to fully belong. He honed his acting skills at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Ahmed’s advocacy for representation has been as impactful as his performances. In 2017 he delivered Channel 4’s annual diversity lecture at the UK Parliament, warning that the lack of inclusive storytelling could push marginalized communities towards extremism and disenfranchisement. He later published a widely shared essay in the Guardian about the real-world consequences of stereotyping and exclusion in media. In 2021 Ahmed launched the Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion in collaboration with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the Ford Foundation and the Pillars Fund. This initiative aims to combat the under-representation and misrepresentation of Muslims in film and television by providing funding, mentorship and support to Muslim storytellers. The accompanying study, ‘Missing & Maligned’, revealed that less than 10 per cent of top-grossing films from 2017 to 2019 featured a Muslim character, with many portrayals being negative or stereotypical.
In his own work, Ahmed has often focused on showcasing under-represented narratives within British culture. In music, Ahmed, under the moniker Riz MC, co-founded the rap duo Swet Shop Boys, whose 2016 album Cashmere addressed issues of racial profiling and South Asian identity. In 2014 Ahmed also wrote and directed Daytimer, a short film that explored the underground daytime rave scene of 1990s British Asian youth, highlighting code-switching between school, home and peer environments. Mogul Mowgli, for which he won the British Independent Film Award for Best Debut Screenwriter (2020), examines the tension between preserving religious traditions and adapting to a changing world and the strain of navigating intergenerational family relationships within a South Asian Muslim household in post-9/11 Britain.
Ahmed has earned critical acclaim for his acting, winning an Emmy for The Night Of (2017) and an Independent Spirit Award for Sound of Metal (2021), for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award, with standout roles in major films like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Venom and Nightcrawler. In 2017 he was featured as a cover star in Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Despite now working globally, Ahmed continues to be based primarily in west London.
Heems (Himanshu Suri) (co-founder of the rap duo Swet Shop Boys with Ahmed in 2014); Bassam Tariq (collaborator with Ahmed, who co-directed and co-wrote Mogul Mowgli (2020)).
'Airports and Auditions', in Nikesh Shukla (ed.) The Good Immigrant (London: Unbound, 2016), pp. 159–68
The Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion website, https://themuslimblueprint.org/
‘Typecast as a Terrorist’, Guardian (15 September 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/riz-ahmed-typecast-as-a-terrorist
Riz Ahmed filmography and project credits, IMDb website, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1981893/
Riz Ahmed music discography, Spotify website, https://open.spotify.com/artist/5R8TntIOEwJcu4NnhGi8KW
Riz Ahmed, YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/RizAhmed
‘Actor Riz Ahmed Wants to Stop Hollywood's "Toxic Portrayals" of Muslims’, BBC (11 June 2021), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57438750
Aftab, Kaleem, ‘Riz Ahmed: “I Want to Be the Change"’, BFI (25 February 2021), https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/riz-ahmed-sound-metal-mogul-mowgli-british-asian-representation
Chakrapani, Anoushka, ‘Riz Ahmed’s The Long Goodbye: Music as Protest’, ROAR (27 July 2020), https://roarnews.co.uk/2020/riz-ahmeds-the-long-goodbye-music-as-protest/
Ellis-Petersen, Hannah, ‘Riz Ahmed Warns Lack of Diversity on TV Will Drive Young to Isis’, Guardian (2 March 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/mar/02/riz-ahmed-warns-lack-of-diversity-on-tv-will-drive-young-to-isis
Gyarkye, Lovia, '"Relay" Review: Riz Ahmed Excels in David Mackenzie’s Mostly Clever Paranoid Thriller’, Hollywood Reporter (9 September 2024), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/relay-review-riz-ahmed-david-mackenzie-1235995208/
Joshi, Tara, ‘Riz Ahmed: The Long Goodbye Review – a Breakup Album Is Hard to Do’, Guardian (8 March 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/mar/08/riz-ahmed-the-long-goodbye-review
Lewis, Tim, ‘"You’ve got to try and worry about something bigger than yourself": Riz Ahmed on Rap, Racism and Standing up to Hollywood’, Guardian (12 December 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/dec/12/youve-got-to-try-and-worry-about-something-bigger-than-yourself-riz-ahmed-on-rap-racism-and-standing-up-to-hollywood
Powell, Sophia, ‘Riz Ahmed in Conversation: On the Need to Redefine Britishness, and 2020’s “Revelations”’, Loud and Quiet (29 December 2020), https://www.loudandquiet.com/interview/riz-ahmed-in-conversation-on-the-need-to-redefine-britishness-and-2020s-revelations/
Power, Tom, ‘Riz Ahmed on Mogul Mowgli and the "life and death" Matter of Muslim Representation’, CBC Radio (21 December 2022), https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/wednesday-sept-8-2021-riz-ahmed-dionne-warwick-and-more-1.6154187/riz-ahmed-on-mogul-mowgli-and-the-life-and-death-matter-of-muslim-representation-1.6167144
‘Riz Ahmed Honoured with the Richard Harris Award’, BIFA (29 November 2021), https://www.bifa.film/news/riz-ahmed-honoured-with-the-richard-harris/
‘Riz Ahmed’s Dire Warning about Unchecked Racism in the UK’, Elephant (20 August 2020), https://elephant.art/riz-ahmed-long-goodbye-racism-uk-film-20082020/
Thapar, Ciaran, ‘Riz Ahmed: "Whether or not we talk about it, India’s Partition is in our bodies"’, GQ Magazine (23 November 2021), https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/riz-ahmed-interview
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
Entry credit
Anisah Rahman
