Riz Ahmed On 'Sound Of Metal,' His Most Accomplished Performance Yet For his latest movie, Ahmed wore a hearing aid and bleached his hair. But it was his internal transformation that really counted. By Matthew Jacobs 12/10/2020 05:45 am ET When Riz Ahmed first showed up in the 2014 thriller “Nightcrawler,” it was the sort of big-screen baptism that makes you sit up and say, “Who’s that guy?” Playing a hard-up hopeful who finds cheap work assisting a bug-eyed Los Angeles crime videographer (Jake Gyllenhaal), Ahmed capitalized on his youthfulness to infuse the role with a frenzied naiveté. The London-born actor was so alive on-screen that his career prospects already seemed blessed.