CALGARY—When Calgary-raised actor Ahad Raza Mir pulled up to a girls’ college in Pakistan last year to speak at a conference, a man stopped him at the entrance gate to deliver a warning.

“We’ve got a bit of a situation,” Ahad recalled the man saying. “When you go inside, just go straight, don’t stop, just go straight.”

Then the gate was opened and on the other side, Ahad was met by a mob of boisterous fans he didn’t even know he had.

“People see my car and everyone starts screaming. They’re getting in front of the car, like the driver’s pushing through everybody. Then I got out of the car, and I just hear the screams,” he said. “I just kind of (did) this awkward wave.”

It was November 2017 and the then-23-year-old had moved back to Pakistan from Canada about a year earlier to follow in the family footsteps — acting in the Pakistani film industry. His grandfather was a pioneer in the country’s film sector, and his dad, Asif Raza Mir, was particularly known for his many film roles in the 1980s. And now Ahad was set to start his first gig in the Pakistani version of Hollywood, starring in the Urdu TV series Sammi, which would be released in January 2017 and would set in motion a “Beatles-mania” type of overnight fame.

“It’s kind of scary. It’s a great feeling, but it’s scary, because you’re like, ‘Whoa, what happened?’” Ahad said, now 25 and with another TV series and a movie under his belt. He said it wasn’t a gradual climb to fame — it was an all-at-once shock.

“It was just like, boom, the next day. Just madness,” he said. “There’s this point where it just took off, just overnight, it just took off. There’s no other way to put it.”

But the glamour of the film industry — and his family’s “legend” within it — was far from what Ahad had experienced for most of his life, which was spent here, in Calgary.

According to Ahad, his family moved to Canada to raise him away from the spotlight.

“They didn’t want us to have special treatment and wanted us to know what hard work is like,” he said.

The call to the entertainment industry beckoned him from a young age, though. He attended Central Memorial High School and was active in its drama program. Then, later, he earned a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Calgary and did a stint with The Shakespeare Company before heading off to Pakistan.

His mom, Samra Raza Mir, said she always knew her son would be famous one day.

“I’m very happy and proud. I always knew he would become an actor — the second they cut the cord,” she said.

After the whirl of fame from the last two years, he’s now taking a short break from the film industry. He’s back in Calgary to star in a version of Hamlet by The Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth (running at Vertigo Theatre until April 13), and the madness of celebrity life feels far away again.

He said he feels like he’s part of two totally different worlds — his family even has two homes, one in Karachi and one in Calgary.

But when he’s in Pakistan, Ahad is secretive about his day-to-day movements.

“If I want to grab a coffee on the way to work, I have to have somebody go get the coffee,” he said. “I could say that sounds very glamorous, but it gets quite ... frustrating because ... sometimes you want to do things on your own.”

And, like many celebrities in Hollywood, the Pakistani heartthrob is also followed by a trail of rumours, some that speculate one of his co-stars, Sajal Ali, is his romantic partner in real life. But Ahad doesn’t let it bother him.

“The best thing about places like Pakistan is that they love couples, they’re just crazy about couples,” Ahad said with a laugh. “The show that took off, me and her were actually part of that, and people just they love that pairing.”

Back in Calgary, he said he can walk into a Starbucks without second glances from strangers. He hangs out with his high school best friend, who he said doesn’t bring up his fame at all, and he spends time at his family’s home in the city.

“It’s a blessing in a way that I can come back to Canada and just kind of come back to Earth for a while, you know?” he said.

Parts of his renown sometime seep into his life in North America, though.

Craig Hall, the artistic director of Vertigo Theatre and director of Hamlet: A Ghost Story, met Ahad back in 2016 during a production of Macbeth, and prior to Ahad’s emergence in the Pakistan film scene. But in the current Hamlet production, Hall said there’s a whole new wave of audience members from the Pakistani community who have come specifically to see Ahad.

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“We had a group of kids (come) from one of the high schools, and when (Ahad) came out into the lobby ... they screamed. It was like the Beatles were in the room,” Hall said.

“After he experienced that, he’s shaking like a leaf. You can tell he’s still adjusting to it.”

Hall said 40 of the theatre’s approximately 140 seats are being filled with people he suspects just came to see Ahad.

“My guess would be that the majority of them have not been to a theatre before. So it’s been a great boom for us,” Hall said.

But before Ahad returned from Pakistan, Hall said he didn’t know what to expect of him since his stardom.

“He’s got hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, and ... just not knowing what that does to a guy,” Hall said.

“But I found him to be almost the exact same guy as he was when he left. I think that’s one of the gifts that his parents have given him ... you know, raising him at a place where he can just be Joe Public.

“I think he likes being here because of that. I actually think it’s a bit overwhelming what he’s been experiencing in Pakistan, and to be able to come back here and just be the lovely guy who offers, you know, the playwright a chair, is a nice escape for him, I think.”

Ahad is glad that he’s partly responsible for a new crowd being drawn to The Shakespeare Company production, and he also hopes to set an example for Canadian youth with South Asian roots who want to pursue careers in the arts.

“I hope that I can set an example for, you know, young South Asians here who ... sometimes the parents maybe forced them to go into post-secondary (and) do like engineering, be a doctor or something like that,” he said.

“I’ve been very lucky, I’ve been very fortunate (that) I had very supportive parents who have let me (pursue the arts). But I’ve seen a lot of times (when) it’s not like that. So I hope that, you know, that I can maybe set an example.”

Soon, Ahad said, he’ll go back to Pakistan, where he hopes to dabble in the digital-platform side of the film industry.

But for now, he’s just absorbing his new life from afar.

“It was weird kind of accepting the fact that, you know, you’ve accomplished something that you’ve wanted to for so long,” he said thinking about that moment in November 2017 when the crowd met him at the girls’ college. “It’s right in front of you.”

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