Biography

Graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and later enrolled into London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

Whenever he has to drop his natural English accent for a role, he speaks to everyone on and off set without it until everything is wrapped up.

Was nominated for the 2012 Shooting Stars Award, which is held every year at the Berlin Film Festival. The award is given to Europe's leading young stars. Previous winners include Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Kelly Macdonald and Carey Mulligan.

In September 2017, he became the first male actor of South Asian origin to win an Emmy, for his role in The Night Of (2016).

Inspired equally by jungle and hip-hop, Ahmed first got involved with music directly in his mid-teens, cutting his teeth on pirate radio and in battle-rap competitions, of which he won many. He was selected as an inaugural BBC Introducing artist in 2007 at the Glastonbury Festival and at London's Jazz Café for BBC Electric Proms the very same year.

The camera or the microphone in the booth is merciless. If you don't believe what you're saying, it hears it. If you don't believe it, it sees it in your eyes, it hears it in your voice that there isn't the conviction there.

[Oxford University] is socially unrepresentative of the real world. The first person I met, I asked to borrow a phone charger. She looked at me, laughed in my face, and told me with no irony or malice that I looked just like Ali G.

What's interesting about the UK is that it celebrates an alternative voice. It's up for telling new stories. Within that fresh range of stories, there are quite a lot of interesting roles out there for young actors... if you seize every opportunity to do the best you can then, just like any freelance profession, word can spread and you might get wider opportunities.

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.

[on representing the Asian community] I try and say that in terms of my intentions, that is to represent myself. But in terms of an awareness of it, like, you know, you're aware of the fact that you do represent more than yourself if there aren't a variety of representatives. It's the same as, like, the dad in East is East is just a character that someone has written, but if there's only one Asian dad on TV for five years then that figure becomes archetypal - you extrapolate from that to represent every Asian dad, for example. And if there aren't that many faces on the screen then the faces that are on screen carry extra weight. So I'm aware of that and I don't think putting my head in the sand is fair really because I think we're in the business of trying to articulate... Some times it's healthy to be indulgent and try to articulate your own thoughts, but trying to articulate collective thoughts of us as Asians, particularly if you're a social group that doesn't have much access or platform to voice your own... I'm not saying you should basically represent minorities or disenfranchised people how they want to be represented - how do they want to be represented? That's patronising in itself - but, yeah, I am aware of that.