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Michelle Kung
Apr 24, 2010 8:00 am ET Ahmed Ahmed can credit his career as a comedian to an unlikely source: bad food. After moving to Los Angeles as a 19-year-old aspiring actor, the Egypt-born Ahmed was quickly typecast and only offered parts as terrorists, cab drivers or hot dog vendors. After refusing to change his name, the actor went broke, fired the agent who suggested he change his name and began working as a waiter in a restaurant that served not-so-great cuisine. “Because the food was bad, I had to make up for it with my service in order to get tips,” said Ahmed, whose directorial debut, the documentary “Just Like Us,” premieres Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival. “I always thought I was funny, but that experience was when the idea of stand-up really came into place for me.”

A year before 9/11, Ahmed was hired by Mitzi Shore of L.A.’s Comedy Store comedy club. According to Ahmed, Shore was prescient about the Iraq war and tensions between America and the Middle East. She “knew that Arab-Americans were going to need a voice,” says Ahmed (whose act was profiled in a 2001 front-page WSJ story.) He quickly learned to adapt his humor for the times (His first post-9/11 joke was, “My name’s Ahmed Ahmed, and I didn’t do it.”). Soon after, he and several of his comedian friends began arranging various comedy tours across the Middle East, the latest of which he filmed and turned into “Just Like Us.”
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