Riz Ahmed found making low-budget movies to be “liberating” early in his career.
Riz Ahmed has enjoyed success in Hollywood
The 43-year-old actor starred in independent films such as The Road to Guantanamo, Shifty, Four Lions, Trishna, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, before getting his big break in Hollywood – but Riz actually enjoyed the freedom that he had early in his career.
Riz – who had his break-out role in Nightcrawler in 2014 – told The Hollywood Reporter: “What popped into my head was this sense of dancing like no one’s watching is the best dancing. And I think about some of the films I did in the beginning, and I was 100 percent certain no one would watch, which was so liberating.
“You could just take swings. But sometimes you get that thing in your head that people will see this, and it can get in your way.”
Riz feels under much more pressure at this stage of his career.
The actor – who has also starred in Sound of Metal and Venom – said: “There’s so many eyeballs on everything, and there’s people eating your face every day on TikTok. So, it can be hard to convince yourself that no one is watching because everyone is watching all the time in the most intense way in a business that feels more precious.”
Riz previously admitted that he felt under pressure to “people-please” at the start of his career.
The actor has explained that he spent years trying to “contort [himself] around other people’s expectations” – but he’s now slowly learning to trust his gut instinct.
He told The Times Magazine: “It’s something I’m still learning to do. If you grow up wearing different masks and code-switching, then your survival is premised on your ability to contort yourself around other people’s expectations and to people-please.
“That’s why I feel like I’ve been able to play a range of different roles, because I’ve had to live that range of different versions of myself. But what it can sometimes rob you of is a clear handle on your core, what your core values are.”
