Riz Ahmed recalls hospitalisation while filming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Riz Ahmed lost "control" of his body during a "very intense" health battle.
Riz Ahmed was hospitalised after his body "gave up on me" while filming 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
The 42-year-old actor has revealed he suffered a "very intense health-related experience" that made him fear he would "never get his life back" just as he landed the movie Sound of Metal.
Speaking on the Podcrushed podcast, he recounted: “Around the time of taking on Sound of Metal, I had a very intense health-related experience myself.
“I had to grapple with the grief but also the acceptance around that.”
He continued: “My body just, kind of, gave up on me.
“I was extremely exhausted, [and] I was hospitalized for a brief period. I just had to really try and retrain my strength. It was, like, building myself up from scratch. It was super scary and intense and quite prolonged, actually.”
He explained that he felt a “deep kind of grief and fear and terror" in the hospital.
Riz recalled: “For a minute, I was, like, ‘Am I ever going to get my life back?’ It really wasn’t clear. Something very silent and very intense had happened to me, and I wasn’t getting better quickly.”
However, he also felt "tremendous liberation and gratitude and acceptance".
He explained: "Someone told me that cancer patients, once they’ve recovered, say, ‘You know what? I’m so glad I’m better, but I wish I could bottle that slightly zen-like gratitude I had when I lost everything.’ I always think that when you’re brought to your knees, you’re halfway to praying.
“You’re humbled in that way when something is taken away from you, you become even more acutely aware of everything you have.”
Although it was a struggle to lose "control" over his body, in "a strange way", he felt "at peace" and "content".
He explained: “You realise, like, you don’t control anything, man.
“You don’t control a single thing. You don’t even control your body. Then, in moments of trippy clarity in the darkness, I realised [that] everything you have is a gift. .. In a strange way, I never felt more grateful, more at peace, more content than when I felt I was going to lose my whole life.”
Sound of Metal tells the story of a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing, and Riz felt compelled to throw himself into telling the story.
He said: “I was like, ‘I need to tell this story. I need to tell a story for me [and] I need to make sense of this.'
“I think that’s one of the greatest privileges that we get as storytellers.”
