Riz Ahmed

Riz Ahmed

Rizwan Ahmed, also known as Riz MC, is a British actor, rapper, and activist. As an actor, he has won a Primetime Emmy Award and has received nominations for a Golden Globe and three British Independent Film Awards. As a rapper, he earned critical acclaim with the hip hop albums Microscope and Cashmere, and earned commercial success featuring in the Billboard 200 chart topping Hamilton Mixtape. He has been involved in raising awareness and funds for Rohingya and Syrian refugee children.

About Riz Ahmed in brief

Summary Riz AhmedRizwan Ahmed, also known as Riz MC, is a British actor, rapper, and activist. As an actor, he has won a Primetime Emmy Award and has received nominations for a Golden Globe and three British Independent Film Awards. As a rapper, he earned critical acclaim with the hip hop albums Microscope and Cashmere, and earned commercial success featuring in the Billboard 200 chart topping Hamilton Mixtape. He is known for his political rap music, has been involved in raising awareness and funds for Rohingya and Syrian refugee children, and has advocated representation at the House of Commons. In 2017, he was included on the front cover of the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Ahmed was born in Wembley, London, in 1982, to a British Pakistani family. His parents moved to England from Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, during the 1970s. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford University, with a degree in PPE. He later studied acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Ahmed’s film career began in the Michael Winterbottom film The Road to Guantanamo, in which he played the part of Shafiq Rasul, a member of the Tipton Three. In 2007, he portrayed Sohail Waheed in the Channel 4 drama, Britz. He then portrayed Riq in the five-part horror thriller Dead Set for E4 and Manesh Kunzru in ITV1’s Wired in 2008.

In July 2009 he appeared in Freefall alongside Sarah Harding. He featured in the title role of the 2009 independent film Shifty, directed by Eran Creevy. He played a charismatic young drug dealer in the film which sees a life in the day of this character. In 2012, he starred as one of the leading roles in the thriller Centurion. He assumed the lead role in Mira Nair’s adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In 2014, he wrote and directed a short film, Daytimer, which won the Best Live Action Short Film award at Nashville Grand Jury Prize. In 2015, he played Bodhi Rook in the Star Wars Anthology film Rogue One. He also starred as a young man accused of murder in the HBO miniseries The Night Of, earning critical acclaim. At the 2017 Emmy Awards, he received two nominations, for his performance in The Night of and his guest role in Girls; he won the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for the former, becoming the first Asian male to win an acting Emmy, and the first Muslim and first Asian to win a lead acting Emmy. He went on to play Carlton Drake in the superhero film Venom. Ahmed is a descendant of Sir Shah Muhammad Sulaiman, first Muslim to become the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court during the colonial era.