DEEP FOCUS

RIZ AHMED CAN UNNERVE AN AUDIENCE WITHOUT SAYING A WORD.

His combination of wide-eyed vulnerability and restless fury keeps your eyes trained on him, regardless of how big or small his role might be. From his early scene-stealing turn as a jihadi in Chris Morris’s scabrous comedy Four Lions , through to acclaimed turns in dramas like HBO’s The Night Of or clever performances in big-budget blockbusters such as Venom and Jason Bourne , Ahmed has always known not only how to draw a viewer’s eye but, crucially, how to keep it there.

In part, that ability is due to the obsessive intelligence he brings to each role, whether playing a former Imperial cargo pilot-turned-reluctant rebel fighter in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story or a jittery paparazzo in Nightcrawler . But it’s also that there’s an intensity to his best performances that keeps you watching simply because you’re unsure how everything might unfold. At 37, he’s carved out an impressive body of work that has him always delivering intensity while being consistently unpredictable.

Now, though, he is preparing for what could be the most exciting stage of his career. With two intriguing projects on the way — Darius Marder’s , which follows a drummer losing his hearing, and , which focuses on a British-Pakistani rapper with an autoimmune illness and was co-written with director Bassam Tariq — he’s diving deeper than ever. Over an hour on Zoom, a particularly pensive Ahmed tells why it’s