Trivia

Graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and later enrolled into London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

Whenever he has to drop his natural English accent for a role, he speaks to everyone on and off set without it until everything is wrapped up.

Was nominated for the 2012 Shooting Stars Award, which is held every year at the Berlin Film Festival. The award is given to Europe's leading young stars. Previous winners include Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Kelly Macdonald and Carey Mulligan.

In September 2017, he became the first male actor of South Asian origin to win an Emmy, for his role in The Night Of (2016).

His Emmy Award-winning role in The Night Of (2016) required him to both lose and bulk up in weight.

Inspired equally by jungle and hip-hop, Ahmed first got involved with music directly in his mid-teens, cutting his teeth on pirate radio and in battle-rap competitions, of which he won many. He was selected as an inaugural BBC Introducing artist in 2007 at the Glastonbury Festival and at London's Jazz Café for BBC Electric Proms the very same year.

Also known by his hip-hop alias Riz MC. He released his first hip-hop single in 2006, Riz MC: Post 9/11 Blues (2006): a controversial satire that was temporarily banned from British airplay. It caught the attention of notorious satirist Christopher Morris, who cast him in his BAFTA-winning indie feature Four Lions (2010).

Riz Ahmed is also a rapper under the name Riz MC. He won several rap battles in 2005, including at Hit & Run night in Oxford, the Jump-Off, Battlescars, and DJ Nihal's "Bombay Bronx.".

Since graduating from Oxford in 2004, he has worked consistently in theatre, film and television, starring in award-winning dramas The Road to Guantanamo (2006), Shifty (2008) and Four Lions (2010).

He is of Pakistani descent.

Merited a position in TIME magazine's "The 100 Most Influential People" (2017) with an homage contributed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

As of 2021 he has become the first ever Muslim to be nominated for a Best Leading Actor Oscar for his film Sound of Metal. The previous Muslim to be nominated and win an Oscar was Mahershala Ali who won for Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight and Green Book.

Ahmed has been in two movies with Jake Gyllenhaal: director Dan Gilroy's crime thriller Nightcrawler (2014) and director Jacques Audiard's adventure comedy The Sisters Brothers (2018).

Favorite TV series growing up in the UK was The A-Team (1983).

Brother is a psychiatrist, his sister is an attorney.

Is one of eleven actors of Asian descent nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category. The others are Miyoshi Umeki, Sessue Hayakawa, Mako, Haing S. Ngor, Pat Morita, Ken Watanabe, Rinko Kikuchi, Yuh-Jung Youn, Steven Yeun and Ben Kingsley.

Is left handed, and founded the production company Left Handed Films in 2019.