I Joined Nollywood To Focus On Building My Brand While Acting – Timini Egbuson

Nollywood actress, Timini Egbuson has come out write about his early days as an actor in the Nigerian movie Industry. He recently had his say via his social media page, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, his sister told him Nollywood is not as lucrative as it seems to be, and he shouldn’t come into the industry with high expectations.

He added that the advice helped him to became intentional about building a personal brand, rather than just being a good actor alone.

His words, “I knew I was not going to do 9-5 because I am very restless. I knew that this waking up in the morning being in traffic, won’t be what it will be. So I started to look for alternatives, I knew I was not going to do ‘Yahoo’.”

“I can’t be in a Police station or be in a cell. A lot of people at that time were going into that. Sometimes, guys will tell you, won’t you carry a laptop?”

“This one you are going to movie sets. Even Dakore used to tell me at the time that there is no money in Nollywood. What will you be doing?”

“That’s why from the beginning it might seem like it was strategic, but it was more of a divine direction that I got from God to make sure that I am building a brand as well that people want to see.”

“What these other guys don’t understand is that you can’t only be a good actor, you have to be a marketable brand.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.