Who Is Riz Ahmed's Wife, Fatima Farheen Mirza? Everything We Know About the Bestselling Author

Major congrats are in order for Riz Ahmed, who recently made history as the first Muslim to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor.

The British Pakistani star earned major critical acclaim for his stunning performance in Amazon Prime's Sound of Metal, as well as countless other nominations—but his achievements don't end there. Ahmed has also appeared in a string of films and shows, including HBO's Girls and Venom. Plus, the actor is a passionate activist and well-known musician, having released successful albums and a mixtape that charted on the U.S. Billboard 200.

Clearly, the 38-year-old actor is on top of his game career-wise, but it sounds like Ahmed's love life is even more reason for him to celebrate. The actor recently confirmed on The Tonight Show that he quietly married a woman named Fatima Farheen Mirza during lockdown. So, of course, we just have to know: Who is Riz Ahmed's wife? Read on for details.

According to her official website, Mirza is a successful writer. She was born and raised in California, and though she initially wanted to pursue medicine, she switched over to creative writing, eventually earning her place in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

In 2018, she published her bestselling novel, A Place for Us, which tells the story of an Indian-American Muslim family as they navigate tensions between tradition and modernity. As it turns out, this popular book has a special connection to a certain Sex and the City actress...

A Place for Us was actually the first book that got published by Parker's new imprint, SJP for Hogarth. And when Mirza first got the news, she said that it felt "surreal."

She told The Guardian, "The first thing I remember saying was, 'Oh my God, I recognise your voice going back years.' I ducked into a McDonalds to escape the noise, and while we spoke, people kept asking to share the table with me. Such a surreal moment. I was stunned during our conversation, because she spoke so thoughtfully about the very scenes that meant the most to me in the book and I felt so comforted that she understood what those scenes meant to the characters, to me."

When Ahmed appeared on The Tonight Show in January, he revealed that he randomly met his wife for the first time at a coffee shop in New York—and it literally sounds like it came straight out of a Hallmark movie.

He told Jimmy Fallon, “We met so randomly, while I was preparing for Sound of Metal, when I was in New York. We just both sat down at the same table in a cafe, where we both turned up to write. We were both jostling over the same laptop plug points, like a very modern way of meeting.”

He continued, “We struck up a friendship and then we reconnected down the line. But it’s weirdly one of the many things about preparing for this role that was so special. It just brought a lot of goodness into my life.”

Although the exact date is unknown, Ahmed confirmed that he and Mirza tied the knot in 2020. Due to the pandemic, the couple decided to have a very small wedding.

While chatting with Kimmel, he said, “Obviously, kept it super intimate, and socially distanced. There was just like, hardly anyone there really. We did it in a backyard, which is nice in lots of ways. And I think the nicest thing about it was you didn’t have 500 aunties hanging around you, pinching your cheeks.”