The Night Of star opens up about Hollywood stereotypes and how he still gets stopped at the airport. Girls. Rogue One. The Night Of. These are just some of the big Hollywood projects that have landed in Riz Ahmed’s lap nowadays, making him one of the most sought after names in Hollywood in recent times. He also gained a spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list which was released in April this year. It seems as though there’s no stopping him now.
The Night Of star opens up about Hollywood stereotypes and how he still gets stopped at the airport.
Girls. Rogue One. The Night Of. These are just some of the big Hollywood projects that have landed in Riz Ahmed’s lap nowadays, making him one of the most sought after names in Hollywood in recent times. He also gained a spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list which was released in April this year. It seems as though there’s no stopping him now.
But Ahmed claims that he still gets stopped at the airport. Earlier, The Night Of star had written an essay for The Guardian in which he shed light on racial profiling and how he would get detained at the airport because of the colour of his skin. Things have changed for the actor since then as he has now become a well known face in Hollywood, but Ahmed is still being stopped at the airport, only this time it’s for selfies.
“I don’t get stopped in the U.S. because I’ve got a visa but I get stopped in the U.K. before I board the plane,” said Ahmed in an interview with W Magazine. “But what’s funny is that the neighborhood where Heathrow Airport is in is a heavily South-Asian neighborhood, and the kids working there are often fans of mine. So the kids that pull me aside to search me are also like asking me for selfies while they’re swabbing me for explosives and stuff or you know going through my underpants and like quoting my raps back at me,” he shared.
On whether Ahmed is still being type-cast in Hollywood, Ahmed said that perhaps his upbringing contributes to the confusion faced by others regarding what role to place him in.“The thing that has been a bit of a gift and a curse for me both in life and as an actor is that maybe I’m used to code-switching a lot, I guess, from one context to another, talking to one group of people to another. It’s just how I grew up, bouncing around between very different worlds means that you sometimes are a bit of a chameleon. And so it might not be immediately clear to people what box you fit into.”
After having attempted a plethora of roles, Ahmed has come to a conclusion about human behavior. “No one is inherently good, inherently bad, inherently evil or saintly. People are just molded by their circumstances. We adapt to survive and I think you have to believe that if you’re an actor because what you’re doing as an actor is saying, ‘You know what, I could be this person if this, this, this, and this in my life had gone differently. This person is me.’”
Additional information from W Magazine
