Riz Ahmed proposed to his wife with a game of Scrabble

Riz said Fatima originally thought he was “joking” when he used the tiles in the word-based board game Scrabble to spell out “will you marry me”.

Speaking during an appearance on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’, he said: "We went out to the park, one of the few things we could do at that point in lockdown, and we kind of had a little picnic and you know, I popped the question. And she looked up and was like, 'You're joking.'

“Maybe the way I proposed didn't help because she's a novelist, she's amazing with words. She loves a bit of Scrabble. So we were actually playing Scrabble and I did that corny thing where I stole all the correct letters up and spelled out 'Will you marry me?' ”

Meanwhile, Riz previously explained how he met his wife “randomly” in New York while he was preparing for his role in ‘Sound of Metal’.

He said: "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."

The 38-year-old Oscar-nominee said the two quickly "struck up a friendship" and later "reconnected down the line”.

He added: "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.”

Riz and Fatima married in a garden wedding amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which he joked was better than a big ceremony because he didn’t have "500 aunties around you pinching your cheeks”.

He explained: "It was kind of interesting doing it with COVID and everything going on, obviously kept it super intimate and socially distant.

“No disrespect to the aunties, but Asian weddings are big. You always got these people crawling out of the woodworks who I think are probably imposters. They just smell the kebabs on the street and just wander in."