Riz Ahmed acknowledges that he is, in his words, “not exactly timid about expressing opinions”. In Four Lions, Nightcrawler and most recently The Night Of, he has made a name for himself as an actor directors turn to when they want a nuanced performance that makes you rethink what you thought you knew about the world. So you can see why the producers of Star Wars cast him in their most overtly political film to date.

Ahmed will soon be appearing in Rogue One, the Star Wars franchise’s very own revisionist history film, which tells the story of an unlikely team of rebels who join forces in a plot to destroy the empire’s most dangerous weapon. His character is at the centre of its anti-imperial narrative: “His planet has been invaded and he knows what is it like to live under occupation and collaborate with the occupiers just to make a living.”

Ahmed is acutely aware of where he comes from. The actor’s father was a chief engineer in the Pakistani merchant navy who emigrated to the UK. “We had an awareness that our ancestors occupied a social class higher than ours,” says Ahmed. “But that’s something migration does to you — you know you might have to take a cut in terms of pay, or just in the general standing of the society you move to.”

He attended Merchant Taylor’s independent school in Northwood — “my parents were eager that we all got the best education possible” — on a scholarship, then got a place at Oxford University, studying philosophy, politics and economics.

Ahmed speaks about his time at Oxford with what verges on disdainful respect. “I had an awareness of the kind of academic prestige that came with being there, and how it would open worlds to me, but I have been both pleasantly surprised and deeply disgusted that I’ve crossed paths with so many of my fellow classmates.”

Star Wars: Rogue One - final trailer 15 show all Star Wars: Rogue One - final trailer 1/15 Vader's back The iconic baddie returns, with James Earl Jones once again voicing the character Lucasfilm 2/15 Fallen jedi Rogue One is set just prior to the original trilogy - after the fall of the lightsabre-wielding Jedi Lucasfilm 3/15 Explosive It's set to be the first true 'war' film in the series Lucasfilm 4/15 She's a rebel Felicity Jones plays lead character Jyn Erso Lucasfilm 5/15 Fighting fit The classic X-Wing rebel ships are back Lucasfilm 6/15 The Death Star The plot follows the rebel team who steal the plans to the Empire's most deadly planet-exploding weapon Lucasfilm 7/15 Beached up The film is bringing new locations to the saga - including beaches and lush jungles Lucasfilm 8/15 Old favourites The Empire's AT-ST walker units from the original trilogy will appear Lucasfilm 9/15 New designs The U-Wing ship is brand new for Rogue One Lucasfilm 10/15 Familiar face Mon Mothma returns, this time played by Genevieve O'Reilly Lucasfilm 11/15 Mads for it Mads Mikkelsen plays Jyn's father Lucasfilm 12/15 Plotting The rebellion plan to take down the evil Empire Lucasfilm 13/15 Callbacks The set and costume design clearly harks back to the original 1977 Star Wars Lucasfilm 14/15 A galaxy far, far away New alien species will be showing up in the film Lucasfilm 15/15 Epic battles Rogue One's biggest set piece brings in the AT-AT walkers and the new AT-ACT design Lucasfilm 1/15 Vader's back The iconic baddie returns, with James Earl Jones once again voicing the character Lucasfilm 2/15 Fallen jedi Rogue One is set just prior to the original trilogy - after the fall of the lightsabre-wielding Jedi Lucasfilm 3/15 Explosive It's set to be the first true 'war' film in the series Lucasfilm 4/15 She's a rebel Felicity Jones plays lead character Jyn Erso Lucasfilm 5/15 Fighting fit The classic X-Wing rebel ships are back Lucasfilm 6/15 The Death Star The plot follows the rebel team who steal the plans to the Empire's most deadly planet-exploding weapon Lucasfilm 7/15 Beached up The film is bringing new locations to the saga - including beaches and lush jungles Lucasfilm 8/15 Old favourites The Empire's AT-ST walker units from the original trilogy will appear Lucasfilm 9/15 New designs The U-Wing ship is brand new for Rogue One Lucasfilm 10/15 Familiar face Mon Mothma returns, this time played by Genevieve O'Reilly Lucasfilm 11/15 Mads for it Mads Mikkelsen plays Jyn's father Lucasfilm 12/15 Plotting The rebellion plan to take down the evil Empire Lucasfilm 13/15 Callbacks The set and costume design clearly harks back to the original 1977 Star Wars Lucasfilm 14/15 A galaxy far, far away New alien species will be showing up in the film Lucasfilm 15/15 Epic battles Rogue One's biggest set piece brings in the AT-AT walkers and the new AT-ACT design Lucasfilm

The first student he met was a bit of a culture shock. “I’d left my phone charger at home so I put on my best Queen’s English and knocked on a neighbour’s door and asked to borrow hers. She sort of laughed and said: ‘It’s unbelievable, you remind me so much of Ali G!’ I thought, ‘OK, this is going to be interesting’.

“I thought about leaving but my pigheadedness prevented me from quitting. It taught me that sometimes your job in life is to stretch the spaces some people find oppressive and make them your own.

“Now you have trigger warnings, safe spaces and the questioning parts of our heritage that were once considered sacred and out of bounds. The Rhodes Must Fall stuff is fascinating. It’s the sort of argument that would never have been thought of while I was there — it just goes to show you how far we have come and how quickly all these discussions have been accelerated by social media. But the argument against it is quite a good one: if we let that slide, what will be left? A lot of buildings will have to come down.”

His time navigating different worlds at Oxford was good training for the film industry. Shortly after leaving university he was cast in Michael Winterbottom’s The Road to Guantánamo because he resembled one of the “Tipton Three”, the British real-life figures who inspired the docudrama, all of whom were arrested and detained by the US as enemy combatants.

In the period after 9/11 Ahmed’s roles became increasingly defined by political circumstances. His parts in films such as the adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist made him into a household name. His appearance in the cult classic black comedy Four Lions, which follows four homegrown British have-a-go jihadists in their incompetent attempt to attack the London marathon, is as funny as it was controversial.

Both are examples of Ahmed’s roles playing with racial stereotyping and the issue of a lack of diversity on our screens.

Has the industry become more inclusive? He laughs. “I think you know the answer to that. Black and ethnic minority representation on British film and television is at its lowest point since the early Eighties. That’s a fact.”

As recently as a few months ago he feels he has been shut out of roles because of his ethnicity. “I’ve been told that implicitly. Heads of studios say things about ‘marketability in foreign territories’, and that’s that.”

In September Ahmed wrote an essay for The Guardian describing his experiences being typecast as a terrorist and comparing being probed in a Hollywood audition room with the numerous examinations he underwent in airport security holding pens.

“It’s important for people to talk about it and to understand,” he says. “That’s what allows us to deconstruct any structural or unconscious biases that our prejudices create. The last thing we need is to be silencing parts of our society by making them feel like they don’t have anything to contribute.”

In the past few years, however, Ahmed has been anything but silenced. He has risen to the very top of British acting. A lead role in HBO’s The Night Of made him an overnight star in the US, as did leading roles in blockbusters such as the latest Bourne film and alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in the voyeuristic crime thriller Nightcrawler. There’s also Rogue One, where he stars alongside Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen and Forest Whitaker.

“Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy are incredible,” he says .“They understand that Star Wars is a franchise that has the ability to shape culture. They are also brave enough to try to lead the way.”

Ahmed was one of the many actors to welcome the decision to cast John Boyega as the lead in the franchise’s reboot, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

“It just makes business sense now,” he says, referencing the $2.068 billion the last Star Wars film made at the box office. “We have to cast globally because films like Star Wars are consumed all over the planet. It’s so important to tap into different markets and to allow kids to see themselves in the film.”

Bodhi Rook, Ahmed’s character in Rogue One, is an everyman, working as a cargo pilot for the empire because his home planet, Jedha, is occupied.

Director Gareth Edwards describes Bodhi as “the guy in a war movie who isn’t supposed to be there. Everyone on the team is a soldier or warrior in some way and there’s this guy who is there by accident but realises he has to step up and make himself valuable.”

“Bodhi is actually sanskrit for ‘awakening’,” says Ahmed. “That’s what makes him so interesting. In Star Wars we have so many characters who are someone’s kid or grandkid and they are born into a legacy of greatness. Bodhi is just a guy who has to step up to the plate. He realises that he has to make choices and take risks that are way above his pay grade. It’s interesting to have a character amid this band of assassins, spies and soldiers that really doesn’t belong on a battlefield. It will make him quite a relatable character, I hope, someone who you can feel the PTSD coming from. He is bringing a lot of guilt to the table. I think he feels he has a lot of debts to settle. But that’s true for many of the characters in this film.

“It’s about the real politics of the situation. One of the interesting documentaries I watched in the lead- up to making the film was The Interpreters, about the interpreters who worked in Iraq for the US army translating who were promised visas after the war finished. They were obviously marked men — they couldn’t still live there because they had collaborated with the Americans as far as everyone is concerned. Most of them didn’t get visas, and some of them had to smuggle themselves through Lesbos into Europe. Others are still living in hiding. Through stories like that I had a nice insight into what happens when you have to swallow your principles just to get through the day.”

It is through the gritty details like these that Rogue One is shaping up to be a very different type of Star Wars experience. As Ahmed says, “it’s quite resonant with the world we live in.” With the director often personally operating the camera, even the way it is shot has a real-life feel: “We were encouraged to tap into the reality of these situations. We weren’t being asked to present a glossy heightened version of the story. It’s a warts and all, dirt under the fingernails, portrayal that gets into the messiness of the story.

“Rogue One is about waking up to the real political situation of your time and accepting you can’t sleepwalk into the future because there won’t be one.”

Still, the threat of a looming Death Star is nothing next to Ahmed’s look of terror when I dare to cross into Disney non-disclosure territory, asking him if there will be a sequel. After a few moments of smiling and rethinking legal commitments he looks me in the eyes and answers: “What I can say is that Rogue One … is a film. It’s a film.”

This piece originally appeared in the December issue of Gentleman’s Journal, out on Saturday, £5.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will be released in the UK on December 16.

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