Nollywood actor, Olu Jacobs in an interview, narrated the challenges he faced on his quest to be an actor and how he reponded to racism challenges in britain.
Jacob in an interview with THE PUNCH, described his father as the only obstacle stood between him and a burning ambition to relocate to England and start a career in acting.
He said,
“My Dad did not want me to go to England. I was his favourite child. When I said that I wanted to act, he said I should do something else and not anything that would take me away from him.”This may sound funny to a lot of Nigerians today, especially in these tough times that parents would do anything possible to send their children abroad in search of the proverbial Golden Fleece. But such was the bond between the actor and his father that the latter became scared of allowing him to settle in a foreign land.
On why he chose Britain to learn acting;
“At that time, if you desired to do this job that we are doing in the arts, you had to go to either Europe or America. France was out of the question for me because I didn’t speak French. I still don’t speak French neither do I speak German or Russian. English was the language of communication that I knew and whatever I wanted to learn I preferred to do it in the language that I understood. And since we already had a relationship between Britain and Nigeria, it was much easier for me to go to England,” he said.
The racism challenges he faced;
“I was a victim of racism all the time. You felt it in the way the people looked at you and in their attitude toward you. But you could not do anything about it. I could not take somebody to court for that,”“A white woman once called me a dog. She had a vacant room for rent. But when I approached her, she asked if I didn’t see the ‘No dogs’ sign on her door. Before I could respond, she said that a dog was better than me and then slammed the door in my face. I felt so bad that I almost decided to return to Nigeria.” he said
No comments:
Post a Comment