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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Riz Ahmed Quotes

There’s this assumption that as an actor, Hollywood is always the end point, but I never thought along those lines.

– Riz Ahmed

It’s interesting – what are you willing to give up in terms of your privacy for access to other people? For access to things you think you desperately need. Ultimately, it’s that old saying, isn’t it? If the service is free, then the product is you. The thing being sold is you. There’s a product for sale in you and your data.

– Riz Ahmed

I’m an actor. Since I was a teenager, I have had to play different characters, negotiating the cultural expectations of a Pakistani family, Brit-Asian rudeboy culture, and a scholarship to private school. The fluidity of my own personal identity on any given day was further compounded by the changing labels assigned to Asians in general.

– Riz Ahmed

I think that in an Internet age, content is content. As long as you can stand up on the merits of what you’re doing right at that moment and aren’t just relying on your success in doing something else, it’s all good; people will respect you.

– Riz Ahmed

I go to a lot of stand-up comedy. I find more inspiration from observational stuff than from rap.

– Riz Ahmed

Whether you look at ‘Glee’ and its normalization of gay identity or you look at the work of Martin Scorsese and the Italian-American community, American culture is able to take these stories, which are seen as marginalized, and just turn them into American stories. And you don’t think twice about it.

– Riz Ahmed

No-one gets a job at 16 and stays in it until 60 any more; we’re connected to more people simultaneously than ever before, whether online or on our phones. We wear so many different hats within one day, one week, a lifetime.

– Riz Ahmed

The fact is, I’ve been releasing records longer than I’ve been releasing films, or at least exactly as long.

– Riz Ahmed

In terms of negotiating a career – I’ve always grown up being an insider and an outsider to different worlds, across different classes and cultures, so I have always naturally liked making films or music that puts things in unexpected places.

– Riz Ahmed

My parents, man, they’re just the most loving, encouraging… They’re like those people who define themselves through their role as parents before people in their own rights.

– Riz Ahmed

I’m not trying to project any persona. Often people don’t know where to put me. I don’t fit comfortably under banners, and that’s fine. I’m not worried about not making sense to people. That’s probably my best asset.

– Riz Ahmed

I’m not in a ‘starry’ position to be able to pick and choose, but I am interested in telling stories of substance with great directors – that’s my only guiding principle.

– Riz Ahmed

Growing up in the mid-to-late ’90s in London, you start seeing the explosion of drum’n’bass and then the birth of U.K. garage and grime. I decided to focus a lot of my energies as an aspiring MC. It was a very natural way to express yourself as a kid from a certain kind of neighborhood.

– Riz Ahmed

Reshoots are par for the course on any film. For me, I kind of love it because, as an actor, you always feel that there was a way you could have done it differently. Being able to go back and do some stuff again is always a blessing in my eyes.

– Riz Ahmed

When I was growing up, I felt like I had to qualify it and say I’m British-Pakistani. But now I kind of feel like, in this day in age, this is what British looks like. It looks like me; it looks like Idris Elba, and hopefully through Nasir Khan, people will see that that’s what an American can look like as well.

– Riz Ahmed

I don’t feel that any kind of narrow stereotypes are representative of the work I’ve done, nor the range of the audience that work has found. I’ve played lots of different roles, and they’ve connected with lots of different people.

– Riz Ahmed

I grew up listening to a lot of early ’90s hip-hop. I had the debut Wu-Tang album, Biggie, Snoop, that kind of stuff. Hieroglyphics, the Gravediggaz. I remember D.O.C.’s ‘The Portrait of a Masterpiece’ was something that had a big influence on me.

– Riz Ahmed

It’s interesting that we assign the label ‘political’ to art that doesn’t just fit a mould of status quo. Is ‘Downton Abbey’ not political? That’s political! Every piece of art offers a perspective on the world. And what is politics if not a perspective on the world? ‘Downton Abbey’ is about class. It’s also about race.

– Riz Ahmed

I never thought acting would be a realistic job for me. Because, quite frankly, I didn’t see people who looked like me doing it. I quickly realized, that’s all the more reason to try.

– Riz Ahmed

First, you have stereotypes, and that will be the black drug dealer, the east Asian kung fu master, the Middle Eastern terrorist in ‘True Lies.’ Then you have stuff that takes place on culturally specific terrain, that engages with it, but actually subverts assumptions. ‘Smashes’ stereotypes. That’s where I’ve come into the game.

– Riz Ahmed

No one’s of Pakistani origin in any British show. That’s why every actor of color is here working in the States. It’s true.

– Riz Ahmed

Rehearsing a scene beds a role into you. But sometimes, if you over-rehearse it without unearthing any new meaning in it, you can suddenly forget your lines. You realise that you are on a stage, not in the real world. The scene’s emotional power, and your immersion in it, disappears.

– Riz Ahmed

The ‘Bourne’ films totally reimagined and elevated the action genre.

– Riz Ahmed

The music I make and the process of acting, for me, are both about trying to understand people and get inside what makes us tick. That’s the main thing that excites me. Our sense of who we really are and what drives us.

– Riz Ahmed

I have always been restless, had a lot of energy.

– Riz Ahmed

Maybe I don’t ever fully switch off, but I think the way I offset that is by splitting my time between film and music. I always want to challenge myself and grow, fail, self-flagellate, and then try again.

– Riz Ahmed

I don’t think any of us like to be reduced to just one label.

– Riz Ahmed

Since the Greek myths, the greatest stories are premised on the idea of, ‘A stranger arrives.’

– Riz Ahmed

I’ve been very lucky to have played a variety of characters, and they weren’t defined by their race.

– Riz Ahmed

Anyone driving great social change, willingly or not, is going to be a fascinating contradictory mix of idealism and ego.

– Riz Ahmed

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