Being a celeb can’t stop me from entering okada – Actress, Beverly Osu

Nollywood actor and media personality, Uti Nwachukwu has said money is not the major factor he considers when choosing which movie roles to accept.

He said what he considers the most before picking a script is the quality of the content and how it speaks to him.

The winner of Big Brother Africa season 4 stated this in an interview with the Punch, as he noted that acting is secondary for him because he loves hosting shows more.

Uti said; “I just cannot be in any movie. Firstly, I look at the quality of the script. Once I get the script that speaks to my heart, I will do it because I am not doing it for the money. My primary business is hosting events and shows. I love to host and I am also doing it to get paid.

“There is also a lot of dedication and discipline that is attached to movie making and for me, if I cannot do something close to perfection, I won’t do it at all. I need to be able to commit a number of weeks or possibly months to acting. When I am ready to settle and focus, I will accept scripts that are also rich because my everyday life is busy”.

Speaking on the growth of Nollywood, Uti said; “We have upped the stakes in Nollywood. I love the quality of movies that have been rolling out from the industry. Nigeria is improving entertainment-wise and I think audiences home and abroad have started to recognise our value and importance in the industry.

“It’s not just about Hollywood anymore, it is about Nollywood too. People are hungry for our content right now. Africa is the new frontier entertainment-wise. I am proud of my industry.”

In related news, Nollywood comic legend, Charles Awurum has said that veterans like him stopped acting in every movie due to the poor standard of the ones produced in modern times.

He stated this during an interview while talking about the little effort and resources new filmmakers invest in movie production.

According to the comic act, unprofessional producers without any training shoot movies with as low as N200,000 and that is not how it used to be.

He also claimed that actors and actresses pay the filmmakers to give them roles in their movies that will make them popular.

Awurum said; ”People just shoot movies anyhow these days. If you do not have enough money to shoot a movie, you stop. You don’t just shoot any movie. This is why most of us, the oldies, no longer partake in every film. With N200,000, some people will move to shoot a film. Actors now pay to partake in movies just for popularity, instead of them to be paid. And where there are no producers or directors that are professionally trained, they just take a space somewhere and they shoot a film.”

The actor further said that he is very picky about the kind of movie he partakes in now which is why people hardly see him in as many films as before.

”I have been shooting but I am not in every film because so many things are happening now. People are just shooting anything, any type of script that comes up. So, I choose what I do”, he said.

Awurum added; ”The industry is growing, most movies we shoot now can stand the test of time. You can match them with that of the white men. We are moving higher and as an actor, if you allow the train to leave you, you should not blame anyone or say you are being segregated. What we are shooting now is no longer what we used to shoot before; if you check the locations of the movies that we are shooting now, you will know that we have gone far.

Everything seems to be like that of the western world. So, when you act in movies that will not go anywhere, you do not expect to be applauded. These people eager to be on the screen are not trained, paid, they do everything by themselves and they still pay for it.”