![]() ![]() ![]() In an industry where it's reflexive to call anyone with a producer's credit and a few extra tricks on their résumé a Renaissance man, Ahmed actually follows through on his manifold interests - actor, rapper, activist - like he means it. But in the decade-plus since, he's carved a defiantly undefinable career path: one that includes a 2017 Emmy for his devastating turn in the HBO limited series The Night Of and an Oscar nomination earlier this year for the visceral indie drama Sound of Metal - the first Muslim Best Actor nominee in Academy history - with a scattering of blockbuster franchises ( Venom, Star Wars, Jason Bourne) and highly personal passion projects in between. It's a disheartening fact that the British Pakistani actor, now 39, was often consigned early on to small forgettable parts or ones strictly reflective of his skin tone. Though it's been nearly a year since production wrapped - and weeks since his tender, harrowing performance earned wide praise following the movie's premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in September - Ahmed still sounds vaguely surprised that it all worked out. And speaking to him, he realized that there could be a real opportunity to do something even more layered and even more subversive with the character and the story." ![]() "You don't normally cast people who look like me in that role, and I think he hadn't really considered going in that direction," he says of his early conversations with director Michael Pearce ( Beast). Marine veteran desperate to save his two young sons from an alien invasion - and other more terrestrial threats. But Riz Ahmed hardly believed he'd land the lead in the eerie apocalyptic thriller Encounter (in theaters Friday and on Amazon Prime Video Dec. He's played a deaf drummer and a tech-bro CEO, a freewheeling surf instructor and a reluctant paparazzo, even a Rebel Alliance pilot in a galaxy far, far away. ![]()
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