Keeping it reel

After several roles in Brit dramas, Riz Ahmed's new film Shifty sees him playing a crack dealer – and consolidating his position as one of the UK's brightest talents. Damon Wise charts his rise
Riz Ahmed and Daniel Mays in Shifty
No half measures ... Riz Ahmed in Shifty PR

Riz Ahmed has in his possession an 18th-century map of London, in which its inhabitants are divided into different types, on account of their respectability. There's "Well To Do", "Comfortable" and "Poor". And where he lives now, just south of the City, is on the threshold of a much less salubrious category. "Semi-Criminal," he grins, explaining what they thought back then of the entire East End community. Ahmed himself, a streetwise and well-educated British Asian of 26, is no such thing, but in his new film, Shifty, he admits he enjoyed his time as a scofflaw, playing a streetwise, well-educated British Asian of about the same age – who happens to deal crack cocaine.

Directed by first-timer Eran Creevy, Shifty is part of an excellent new wave of low-budget British genre movies that began just over two years ago with London To Brighton (2006), and continued with the likes of last year's Donkey Punch, the recent Hush and the upcoming Moon. Simplicity is the key to all these projects, and Shifty is possibly the most stripped-down of the bunch. Set in a fictional small town, it stars Ahmed as drug runner Shifty, a handsomely-paid but underachieving dealer whose dull routine is interrupted by the arrival of an old friend (Daniel Mays). Shifty doesn't know it yet, but one of his clients is becoming desperate. Meanwhile, his supplier is getting in over his head with some very unpleasant people, and Shifty's being offered up as the unwitting fall guy.

But although it sounds like a grubby, dark, depressing drama, Shifty is anything but. It's a film about friendship and responsibility, with the drug world largely in the background. "And it's a very business-like world," says Ahmed, citing Biggie Smalls's almost absurdly corporate song Ten Crack Commandments as evidence. "So we approached it like that. People think of these characters as either cartoon-like or glamorised, but the feedback we're getting is that we're not showing it that way: a world of comic-book mockney London types. But although it's realistic, it dodges all the pitfalls of slit-your-wrists, isn't-life-grey? kitchen-sink British realism. It's a movie."

Ahmed arrives 15 minutes late for the interview, apologising profusely both for his tardiness and the head cold that's blunted his usually sharp senses. He's just wrapped another movie (Neil Marshall's historical action-adventure Centurion), and is in rehearsals for another acting job. In the meantime, he also has some mixes to complete for his record company, on five songs he's recorded under the name Riz MC.

He's an extraordinarily busy man, but unlike many of his peers he's very difficult to pin down. At this moment in time, his acting output – which began three years ago in Michael Winterbottom's docudrama Road To Guantánamo and has also seen him star in TV dramas Britz and Dead Set among others – is almost perfectly level with his recorded output, which began at the same time, with the quirky, catchy The Post 9/11 Blues. Which makes him very difficult to put into a box, a practice he savages in his satirical song Radar.

Actor turned musician, or the reverse? It's 50-50, and Ahmed doesn't take that as a compliment. "In my head, and my heart, I guess it is like that," he shrugs. "But I don't like the idea of saying it's 50-50, because that gives the impression that I'm not giving 110 per cent to both. But I kind of am. I work seven days a week and I sleep four hours a night. So I agree with you, to an extent. But I guess there's always that danger when people split themselves and do more than one thing: they do a half-arsed job in each. So I'm quite strict with myself. Y'know, they're both stupidly competitive fields. There are talented people working in both. So there's no point in trying to do anything half-arsed." He sniffs. "Hence this horrible cold!"

And in that respect, he says, Shifty isn't a half-measure either. "Ideally, he's just completely subverting a stereotype," says Ahmed. "I was very clear in my head, and I was very encouraged when I had my first conversations with Eran about the character, that I didn't want him to be played as a stereotypical drug dealer. He's just a guy and it happens to be his job. It's intriguing. Why should it be surprising for a prolific drug dealer to have four As at A-level and be a maths genius? I mean, yeah, there's a whole different argument about whether he should or shouldn't be, but he existed as a three-dimensional character, instantly. And there aren't a lot of those about!"

Interestingly, Ahmed refuses several opportunities to comment on Shifty's ethnicity. He seems similarly reluctant to comment on a 2006 encounter he himself had with suspicious customs officers at Luton airport after Road To Guantánamo won the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival. He also refutes any suggestion that Shifty's faith – he's a Muslim – might have been appealing to him. "Nah," he shrugs. "The character appealed to me on the same level that it would appeal to any actor, y'know? I think the fact that it's kind of breaking down barriers, in terms of racially narrow-minded casting, is an added bonus. Anyone would love to play Shifty, any of the young actors working in the UK today."

Rather than examine the sociopolitical ramifications of being a Muslim drug-dealer, Ahmed spent more time wondering what was on Shifty's iPod. It turns out that Shifty, like Ahmed, is a bit of an old-school rap fan. "My brother was always listening to hip-hop," he smiles. "I idolised my brother, growing up, so I'd be around it a lot. He'd sneak out the house and say, 'You're not listening to those tapes, they've got swearing on them!' I'd listen to them constantly and memorise the raps, thinking of that one secret day in the future when I'd suddenly just burst out in a verse."

Listening to Wu-Tang Clan, Hieroglyphics and The DOC inspired him, and his love of rhyming lasted through school and university: he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford before heading to the Central School Of Speech And Drama for an MA in drama. "I've always acted, and I've always done MCing," he says. "I was MCing on pirate radio stations though school, and at university I set up a club night. I went to drama school at the same time I was doing rap battles on the London scene, and then released my first single when Road To Guantánamo came out. But at the same time, I was acting in and directing plays throughout, and I was filming Road To Guantánamo at the same time I was writing those tracks, which is why I don't feel any newer to the acting process than music. I'm not a musician-turned-actor, or an actor-turned-musician. I've always done them both."

It may be this refusal to see a divide, and his determination to keep his music grounded, that gives Ahmed his power as an actor. He doesn't overdo it, doesn't go for the grand gesture, and in the case of Shifty he really does make a potentially ridiculous character seem not simply normal but funny, sympathetic and really quite likable. "It's such a rinsed-out word, isn't it, humanising?" he muses. "But I kind of feel like I've been lucky, in that the work I've been doing has been humanising territory or types, and introducing nuance into that terrain. Whether it be a prisoner in Guantánamo Bay …" He laughs "… Or your friendly neighbourhood crack dealer. That's what I'm proud of."

Shifty is out on Friday