Riz Ahmed is an Academy and Emmy Award winning actor, director, musician, and writer.

Born and raised in Wembley, Ahmed studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, going on to study acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Ahmed’s breakthrough role was in the 2006 film The Road to Guantanamo. He has starred in the satirical film Four Lions, the HBO award-nominated series The Night Of, and The Sound of Metal, for which Ahmed received a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. More recently, Ahmed has featured in Wes Anderson’s latest film The Phoenician Scheme, and plays the titular role in Aneil Karia’s modern adaptation of Hamlet. In October, Riz will be seen alongside Tom Cruise and Sandra Hüller in DIGGER, Alejandro Iñárritu’s first English language film since The Revenant.

Ahmed is the founder of the award-winning production company, Left-Handed Films, which has produced films including the 2020 feature film Mogul Mowgli, and the 2020 short The Long Goodbye, both of which were written by and starred Ahmed, which won an Academy Award for Best Short Film.

Ahmed has written, produced, and starred in a forthcoming comedy series for Amazon Prime titled BAIT, following the struggles of aspiring actor Shah Latif, whose life takes a surreal turn as he navigates an existential crisis and a bizarre conspiracy. His performance has been described as ‘dazzling, with sharp comic timing and a mega-watt charisma.’

As a musician, his career has spanned two decades across battle rap, techno, a successful American band Swet Shop Boys, and most recently, his critically acclaimed, award-winning 2020 solo album “The Long Goodbye”.

In this episode of Fashion Neurosis, Bella Freud and Riz Ahmed discuss the importance of Hamlet today, using colour to represent different personalities, and how to speak by just listening.

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