RIZ AHMED has called for more and better representation of Muslim characters on screen in an interview with British GQ.
The 38-year-old actor born in London to a British-Pakistani family says how lack of diversity is a "blind spot all over our culture".
He added poor representation "costs lives" and said that our society should "empower people to tell their own stories".
In the interview he told the publication: 'It's not surprising, but it is shocking. It's a blind spot that's all over our culture.
'And it costs lives. Countries get invaded, hate crimes go up, laws get passed. So off the back of that we're thinking, 'What do we need to shift?' And, actually, it's about empowering people to tell their own story.'
His next role is in Mogul Mowgli which sees him play a British-Pakistani rapper diagnosed with a degenerative autoimmune disease.
On his new movie he said: "It's basically a pandemic movie: a workaholic gets hit with a health crisis; his life is thrown into a lockdown.
"He has to sit with himself, reassess what really matters. I always find the making of a film, the telling of a story and the story itself, end up mirroring each other. Always."
Speaking about the film's reception in the US compared to the UK, he added: "I'm a bit more detached from how it's being received than I would be with other work.
"And there is something quite liberating about that… The irony is that the stuff you make without having one eye on how it's being received is the stuff that is received best."
