Actor Riz Ahmed took a brief pause from his jury duties at the Red Sea Film Festival to take part in an intriguing Q&A session this morning, where he discussed his career and what he described as the unique path he had to forge away from the UK industry to advance his career.
Ahmed told the audience in Jeddah that he found early success in the UK with roles in indie projects like Four Lions and Shifty. “These were micro-budget films with a budget of 100,000 pounds. They did well, but I was bumping up against a glass ceiling,” Ahmed said of the time.
“At that time in the UK, they liked to do a lot of period dramas. And people would say, What do we do with someone like me? It was a lot of love from a distance. People would say, We would love to work together, but I have no work for you.”
Ahmed added, “I was jobless in the UK, and I actually had a conversation with Idris [Elba] that changed everything for me.”
Ahmed said Elba told him he had to go to the U.S. to progress his career.
“I said, What are they going to do with someone like me over there? And he said, My brother, categorize yourself not,” Ahmed said, adding that “the flight to Los Angeles was basically about 80% of all the money I left,” but he decided to gamble and traveled to the States to audition for Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler.
“I flew to LA, and on the flight, I just went over the script again and again and again. I landed, went straight to the audition, and just decided to bet on myself, and that was the first time I started working in America,” Ahmed said.
The London-native went on to star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. After that feature, Ahmed told the crowd he landed the lead in HBO’s The Night Of, after which his career began to blossom.
Ahmed served on the Red Sea jury alongside Sean Baker, Nadine Labaki, Olga Kurylenko, and Naomie Harris.
The festival ends tomorrow.