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Rizwan Ahmed
Born	1 December 1982 (1982-12-01) (age 27)
Other name(s)	Riz MC
Years active	2006-present

Rizwan Ahmed (born 1 December 1982), also known as Riz Ahmed or Riz MC, is an MC and actor.

Contents 1 Personal Life 2 Music 3 Acting career 3.1 Filmography 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Personal Life

Ahmed was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, a boys' independent school in Northwood, Middlesex. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and trained as an actor on the MA Classical Acting course at Central School of Speech and Drama. He is of Pakistani descent, his grandparents having come from Pakistan to Britain in the 20th century.

[edit] Music

Rizwan Ahmed makes music under the name 'Riz MC'. He released his first hip-hop single in 2006, "Post 9/11 Blues", a controversial satire that was temporarily banned from British airplay due to the politically sensitive lyrics.

He was selected as a BBC Introducing artist in 2007, playing the Glastonbury Festival and the BBC Electric Proms. He opened the Meltdown Festival with Bristol-based trip-hop group Massive Attack at the Royal Festival Hall in 2008, and was appointed 'Emerging Artist in Residence' at the Southbank Centre in London. He played at the London Camp for Climate Action in August 2009.

[edit] Acting career

Ahmed's film career began in the Michael Winterbottom film The Road to Guantanamo in which he played the part of Shafiq Rasul, a member of the Tipton Three. Ironically, he and another actor involved in the film as well as two of the Tipton Three were detained at Luton Airport upon their return from the Berlin Film Festival where the film won a Silver Bear Award ^[1]. Further to his film career he has featured in the 2009 Sally Potter production of Rage. Most notably however, he featured in the title role of the 2009 independent film Shifty by Eran Creevy. Ahmed plays the charasmatic young drug dealer in the film which sees a life in the day of this character. He was nominated for Best Actor at the 2008 British Independent Film Awards for this role, alongside Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.

He has gone on to perform on stage, with a role in the Asian Dub Foundation opera Gadaffi and a starring role as psychotic serial-killer-turned-born-again-Christian Lucius in Lighthouse Theater's acclaimed production of Stephen Adly Guirgis's Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train (directed by Jack William Clift and Thomas Sweatman) as well as in Shan Khan's Prayer Room.

Across his years as an actor he has also featured in various TV roles. He has played Sohail Waheed in the 2007 Channel 4 drama, Britz. 2008 saw him perform as both Riq in the five-part horror thriller for E4, Dead Set and Manesh Kunzru in ITV1's finance fraud drama Wired. In July 2009 in appeared in Freefall along side Sarah Harding.

[edit] Filmography

• Freefall (2009)(TV) .... Gary
• Rage (2009) .... Vijay
• Dead Set (2008)(TV) .... Riq
• Baghdad Express (2008) .... Talal
• Wired (2008)(TV).... Manesh Kunzru
• Shifty (2008) .... Shifty
• Britz(2007)(TV) .... Sohail Wahid
• Berry's Way (2006)(TV) .... Amir
• The Path to 9/11 (2006)(TV) .... Yosri
• Banglatown Banquet (2006)(TV) .... Razual
• The Road to Guantanamo (2006) .... Shafiq

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Riz Ahmed at the Internet Movie Database
• Riz MC homepage
• Riz MC at BBC Maida Vale and Glastonbury
• Confidential Collective
• A short, sharp shock of a play The Telegraph
• When even actors aren't safe New Statesman
• Guardian piece on "Post 9/11 Blues"
• Google video of "Post 9/11 Blues"
• Official Shifty website

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