‘I’ve had some hairy experiences’: actor Adeel Akhtar on racism, role models and feeling hopeful

At 30, Adeel Akhtar was all but homeless, now he’s been nominated for this year’s Baftas.

Here, he talks about the beauty of ordinary livesAdeel Akhtar was living in a van, wondering if he should move back in with his parents.

It was 2010.

He’d recently appeared in Four Lions, the Chris Morris satire, in which he plays a Muslim extremist who, in an uncanny set of events, blows himself up in a Yorkshire sheep field.

The film had been successful.

(The New York Times called it “stiletto sharp”.) But it did not immediately become the career tipping point Akhtar hoped it might.

So there he was: 30 years old, not well off, suffering after the break-up of a “messy” relationship, recording audition tapes from his van.

The work had dried up, but he wasn’t hustling.

Even when he got a gig, he sometimes wouldn’t bother learning his lines.

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