Nigerian Movie Star Profile
Bimbo
Akintola
Tell us about your family
and education?
I’m the third child in a family
of six. My father is from Oyo State, while my mother is from
Edo State. I had my diploma and first degree in Theatre Arts
from the University of Ibadan. I like singing, dancing and,
above all, I like acting.
Would you say,
therefore, that you are versatile?
I would
love to believe that I am versatile because I like to play
different kinds of characters.
Your role in The Mourning After must have
demanded so much of you, how much?
In the
Mourning After, I played the part of a woman of about forty
years of age who has two teenage daughters and has to go
through a whole lot of battles with the Igbo tradition, on the
kind of treatment meted out to widows. She goes through a
range of emotions; from sad, depressed to almost insane and
then I had to cut off my hair. I did it because of the mood of
the film, you know, to drive the message home. It was an
integral part of the story.
What was the
feedback from the film like?
It was warming because
a lot of people were moved by the story. There were a lot of
the people that came back to me to talk about the fact that
they had gone through similar things and at the end of the
day, I felt like I had done something. It was just something
great.
Are you in anyway motivated by that role
to want to go into an NGO to fight the depravities of women in
our society?
I never really thought about it,but it
sounds like a good idea because there is a lot that we have to
change about our traditions. I’m not saying that traditions
are bad. I love tradition, but there are certain traditions
that just seem to damage life. In Africa somebody dies and it
has to be that somebody must have killed him. It can’t be by
natural cause. People forget that we don’t do regular check
ups here and we don’t do autopsies. So you could never tell
what killed who, when or where, or why. These are part of the
things that the film brought back to me, things it made me
realise.
Outside acting, what do you
do?
I have this talk show I’m producing, oh, I keep
talking about my talk show, people are going to start stoning
me one day when they don’t get to see the talk show. Maybe I
am being a perfectionist. I want it to be good; I will always
give my best effort. I don’t want to give the people anything
shoddy. So, I do have a talk show that I have been working on
for quite some time now, on adn off, I’m taking my time.
Have you signed with any particular TV station
for this show?
I’ve not thought about a particular
TV station, but I’m thinking network. What I’m working on is a
talk show on topical issues, things that affect each and every
Nigerian, in whatever way, small or big. Things that we need
to address, things that people never want to talk about but
are a part of the problems in the society.
Would
you say you are sociable?
Do I like to go out, you
mean? Well, yes, I like to go out with my girlfriends, my
right dames. So what do you see, I go clubbing once in a
while, depending on my mood. I am sociable, I can be very
sociable.
Talking about your girls, why the
girls, why not the boys? As if the boys don’t
matter?
Why, of course, the boys do matter. Come
on, God created male and female for a particular reason. Men
do matter, but I enjoy having night outs with my girlfriends.
It’s just great fun, for us to gist and talk about men.
Who is the man in your life?
Nobody!
How do you mean, nobody, you are an African and
here at an age as yours if a girl has no man to take to the
parents, you know what they will think?
That’s one
of the things I think we need to address in this country, the
fact that people say “At a particular age, you need to have a
man”. A man does not define your right, a relationship is
suppossed to move you forward in a particular way but it does
not define who you are. Now if I do not have a relationship,
it doesn’t change the fact that I’m Bimbo Akintola and this is
what we do to our females in this country; we frustrate them
to the point that they marry anybody, not thinking of the fact
that there is a life after marriage, which is why we have so
many break ups. That’s one of the things we need to address. I
don’t have a man, I’m proud to say it...
Is it
that the men have stopped making advances at
you?
Let’s say I haven’t found Mr Right. There is
no Mr Perfect, but there is an honest person, you know, no, my
taste is not high. I like very, very plain, easy, nice people,
people with integrity, principled people. I like people who
have something upstairs, intellectuals. I don’t think I’m
asking for too much because we have lots and lots of people
like that in this country. Nigeria has great men, very
talented, any which way you like to put it.
What
is the greatest thing that has happened to you?> www.nigeriamovies.net
The
fact that, at a tender age, I found out what I wanted to do
and had stubborness, you can call it any other name, but my
mother says it is stubborness, to achieve it.
Is
that stubborness paying off?
Yes because it enables
me do what I want to do.
Regrets?
I
learn from my mistakes but harbour no regrets, really.
Your first English language movie was Out of
Bounds. How really bad was the feedback like from your
fans?
First, that was the film for which I was
awarded the best actress, English actress and the best actress
in Nigeria, so I would say for me it was a forward movement.
And a lot of people love the character even though most people
wouldn’t understand what the character was all about, yet a
lot of people found her naughtiness very interesting.
What was the character about, really, other than
one wayward satanic girl?
She is just a girl crying
out for help. You know that when children want your attention,
they tend to behave badly just to get your attention. She
wanted the parents’ love and attention because she believed
that she wasn’t getting any of that and she behaved badly in
the hope to get it saying since they didn’t really love me
then I don’t have to conform but at the same time, she wanted
so much for them to love her.
How were you able
to handle the negative publicity it gave you?
I
don’t think it gave me a negative image. Nobody has come up to
me and said you were some kind of a bad girl, instead I have
had comments like “Oh, I love that character, you played it
normally, so I don’t believe it gave me a bad
image.
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