OC Ukeje: Depending on Nollywood alone for my livelihood would be silly

OC Ukeje, movie actor, has said the Nigerian movie industry, dubbed Nollywood, cannot be depended on for a sustainable livelihood.

In a recent interview with Saturday Beats, Ukeje also noted that he’s extremely selective of the movies he features in.

The versatile actor stressed that on multiple occasions, movie producers have complained about his high wage bill.

“I don’t think I am biased by not featuring in home videos. I think everything is a conversation. I have been approached but it I think that the process of deciding to make a movie takes a lot of time.

“As a producer who wants an actor on a project, you have to send a script to him; the actor would then read it and decide if he wants to work on it.

“I find out from my experience that most of the people who do what people term as ‘Asabawood’ would call you to feature in a movie and when you give them your bill, they would say you are asking for too much.

“But I am not asking for too much and it is a conversation. I have the right to feature in a movie that I like and you have the right to feature whoever you want to work with. That has been my experience.

“Everyone who goes into this business has to be sure of the reason they are doing it in the first place. It is important to make money but I don’t think that money is everything.

“This is why some people have legacies. I would like to leave a legacy and have money but I have to be intelligent with the way I go about it.

He also inferred that as opposed to America’s film industry, Hollywood, the Nigerian industry pays far too little.

“It would be silly of me to depend on films alone as my only source of livelihood especially because I know that the industry is not in a place where one or two pay days can cover you for a year. That happens abroad but not here.”