Riz Ahmed in Austin, Texas on March 14, 2026 Riz Ahmed tells PEOPLE he once received a watch as a gift from a film festival for his turn in the 2008 movie Shifty <\/em>that was worth double what he had earned for starring in the movie<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n “That was the first time I kind of relaxed for a minute,” he says of feeling like he had obtained some financial security<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Ahmed incorporated the real life experience into the new Prime Video series Bait<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n When Riz Ahmed<\/a> was still trying to earn enough money to make a living as an actor in the late 2000s, he received a watch as a gift that has maintained an amount of significance for him in the years since.<\/p>\n “I had a much more humble idea of ‘making it,’ ” Ahmed, 43, tells PEOPLE while discussing his new film adaptation of Hamlet<\/em><\/a> and his Prime Video miniseries Bait<\/em><\/a>. The latter, in particular, features Ahmed as a young British actor desperately searching for a way to raise his profile.<\/p>\n “It was like, ‘Can I pay rent, really?’ For me, when I did Shifty<\/em> when I was 27, I think that was a big moment for me,” he says, when asked when he first felt like he “made it.”<\/p>\n “My mind is going to a strange story that I’m gonna tell. I got awarded a watch at a film festival, I think in Zurich or something,” the actor adds. “I didn’t go. They just sent it to me. I remember taking this watch and, and the watch was worth more than I got paid in the film. I think I got paid\u00a0\u00a31,000 for the film and the watch was worth \u00a32,000. I remember thinking, ‘Okay, great. I’ve got an insurance policy. Anything ever goes wrong, I can sell the watch.’\u00a0And that was the first time I kind of relaxed for a minute.”<\/p>\n Riz Ahmed and Daniel Mays in ‘Shifty’ One of Ahmed’s earliest screen acting credits came in 2008. The crime thriller Shifty<\/em>, in which he starred as a London-based drug dealer, also marked one of his first leading film roles.\u00a0He broke out in the U.S. in the 2010s with movies, like Nightcrawler<\/em> and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story<\/em>, but Ahmed tells PEOPLE he kept that watch in its box until recently just in case he needed a financial backup plan.<\/p>\n “I’ll tell you the honest truth, the first time I unboxed that watch and wore it was last year. I think part of me was still just like ‘Man, you never know,’ ” he says. “So I guess that’s another way of saying that I’m not sure I ever feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve made it.’ You know, ‘I’ve made it’ means I can, relax, stop and kick back. I always feel like there’s a thing I need to make I haven’t made yet.”<\/p>\n Ahmed won an Academy Award<\/a> in 2022 for his work on the live-action short film The Long Goodbye<\/em>, which was a companion piece to his 2020 studio album of the same name.<\/p>\n
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