The worst audition of Riz Ahmed’s career: “I didn’t get the role for some reason”
Riz Ahmed is the rare actor who is always believable when completely transforming himself to become a multitude of different characters, deeming him one of the most daring of his generation, but every actor who takes such immersive lengths is also faced with situations in which they’ve gone too far.
Ahmed did not earn his reputation overnight, though, having spent years in auditions and taking smaller roles before he eventually gained greater recognition for acclaimed films like Nightcrawler and The Sound of Metal.
Any actor who risks being underrated for too long may try to go out of their way to impress whoever they are auditioning for, especially if it is someone of note within the industry, and in Ahmed’s case, it was Danny Boyle, for whose Slumdog Millionare he was to read for the role of Salim Malik, which would eventually go to Madhur Mittal.
While no one at the time could have anticipated that Slumdog Millionaire would become a surprise word-of-mouth hit and take home eight Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for Boyle, that didn’t mean that Ahmed didn’t want the role. The opportunity to work with him was something that every British actor desired; between the brutal coming-of-age dramedy Trainspotting, the terrifying horror film 28 Days Later, the psychological thriller Shallow Grave, and the science fiction epic Sunshine, the director has proven that he could make a masterpiece within many genres.
It was perhaps the actor’s enthusiasm that got the better of him, as he remembered getting into character to play Salim in a way that shocked his potential director.
“That was probably the worst audition in my life,” Ahmed said, “I can’t remember exactly what happened in the audition, but I remember it ended with me holding Danny Boyle up against the wall, and I’d ripped his shirt open, and a couple of the buttons popped off, and he goes, ‘All right, thanks a lot, Riz, thanks for coming in, appreciate that’. I didn’t get the role for some reason.”
Although he may be able to think back on his experiences and laugh, the anxiety of nailing an audition is something that many actors deal with. It’s very challenging to summarise one’s essence as a star into a brief window of time in which reading for a role, and Slumdog Millionaire was a particularly high-profile project because it primarily cast actors of Indian and Pakistani descent, which was, at the time, a rarity for a film with such a significant budget behind it.
Thankfully, the industry has become far more inclusive in the nearly two decades since its release, and Ahmed has been a significant part of it, becoming the first Pakistani performer to ever receive an Academy Award for acting with his performance in The Sound of Metal, and later became the nation’s third winner ever when he won the trophy for ‘Best Live-Action Short Film’.
Since his career has only grown in the years since he bombed his audition, it might be the right time for him to finally team up with Boyle, who has continued on a stellar trajectory, and is currently working on both the biopic Ink and a third installment in the 28 Years Later trilogy; he would certainly be able to find an appropriate place to slot in someone of Ahmed’s talent.
