I K Ogbonna on Illusion

Tell us about your acting career?

My acting journey stated in 2013 where I featured in a film
titled Love Lorn, the movie came out in 2014, so my acting career kicked off in
2014. Ever since then it’s been one movie to the other. I have never found
myself looking for movie roles. It’s more like that was the time I started
acting because after I finished Amstel Malta Box Office in 2006, I didn’t get
any movie roles all that time, the first movie I did, the producer came to look
for me and begged me to be in the movie, and after then it was producers coming
to meet me so I have never for once gone to meet any producer. Since 2014, I
think I have done over a hundred movies, I can’t count it, but I think I have
done over a hundred movies because if I do a statistics of how many movies I do
per month, and I look at it over a period of time, it is over a hundred.

                                    Emilia Emeka-Nwamadi(Passion) on the set of Illusion

Can you remember the names of a few of them?

I will start with my own movie that I produced; Excess
Luggage, it is coming out in cinemas soon. I have actually produced two movies,
the first one was for Ibaka TV and DSTV it is called “Knock Knock”.  I had Chika Okeke and myself.  The second One, I had Mike Ezuruonye, Queen
Nwaokoye, Myself, Denrele Edun, Monalisa Omorodion, Shaffy Bello and Fred
Amata. So that one should be coming out in the Cinemas on October 14^th
although the cinema wants me to release it earlier than that but I would really
want to release it on October 14^th. Apart from that one, other
movies I have been in are; Ghana Must Go, 
How not to fall in love, 
Illusion, Stop, Love is a Prank, 
Power of Tomorrow, Triangle, lot of them, I can’t start remembering all.

Let’s talk about this set you are in
now,  Illusion, you are in it, What’s the
role you are playing here?

My character’s name is Lanre. Lanre is engaged to a friend
of the major Character Retta, who finds herself in a dilemma in a situation
where she is looking for her husband and her son who mysteriously went missing,
so  she is in the process of finding
these loves of her life and in the process lot of things happened, they find a
dead body  in her car and my fiancé is
caught in the mix with her. At the end of the day, myself and my fiancé had to
try and help Reta resolve the issue she is facing.

                            

What is the moral in this film?

The moral in this film. If I would start looking for what
the film can teach, something must trigger me to want to be here because apart
from being here apart from just doing a movie. I learnt something that I
probably paid less attention to all my life, and that is the fact that a friend
that is my fiancé was called to help the friend, escort the friend to her in-laws’ place, they entered the car, started the car and just started going to
this place without searching the boot or anything, I mean, that is one thing
that we all do. It’s your car, you just go in to your car without checking, you
don’t expect to see anything,  you think
it is the way you left it. You know. So  I remember today, this morning, when the
driver came to pick me up at the hotel, I unconsciously said I wanted to see
the boot, you know because I had that in my head, anything can happen, it
stretches to your traveling luggage, if you don’t pack your luggage yourself,
to the point where you zip it and lock it. You must cross check before you go
to the airport and a lot of people are in prison today, in jail because they did
not do that last minute check.  I picked
up that simple thing that it is important that you do  last minute check, on anything that is going
to be a medium of transportation for you. Yes that is one thing I learnt.
Secondly is, I won’t say don’t trust anybody because at some point you have to
give your trust to someone and people come in deceptive images you never can
tell who is the saint and who is the devil sometimes the person you think is
the devil is actually the saint and vise versa, but you know live and love and
always stay prayerful and then let God take control of every other thing.

                                     Emilia Emeka-Nwamadi(Passion) and I K Ogbonna
                                   

From your experience as an actor, what do you think is the
quality of a good actor?

A good actor must be ready and able to research at every
point in time you can’t just sit down and say I am a good actor and when the
script comes you jump on set. You must research. I read lots of journals , that
have to do with acting. I go on You Tube, I do lot of research on You Tube to know
things. I watch my movies whenever I have opportunity to, so I can see my flaws and know what to work
on, I read comments, I look out for the critics comment, not just critics but
creative critics comments because it helps see those things that I don’t see
and it helps me to work on myself because for me, Acting is just more than
making money out of it, it is a passionate thing that I find myself doing and I
give a lot of things to it. I give my heart, my soul to this business and for
me to give this amount of energy to this business, it means that I would really
want to grow and get to the highest point, so I keep researching every now and
then, when I come on set, I talk with the directors, I read my script back and
forth, do my break down. In the work, I learn a lot. I think at any point in
time I can handle any department that is lacking. At the same time I watch lots
of movies , I look at people outside and just watch and study them because
every human being has a character of his own. sometimes I’m in the club and I’m
looking at somebody I’m just watching the person and when I come on set I pick
that person’s character and replay it. When I’m watching  movie somewhere, I just pick up something so
I try to learn from different people how to embellish their character and
represent it on film but major, most important characteristic of a good actor is
that you should be able to drop your personal issues in the corner when you are
coming on set and wear the character for the mean time till you are done.

Without the fans you are equal to an every day worker, you
just wake up and go to work and comeback. Your talent is not enough. Your fan
base is really what pushes you. Without the fans out there people that support
your work the brands will not approach you to endorse you. People will not see
your relevance. The TV stations and social media and online platforms and at the
cinema people will not come to watch your movies because you don’t have that
fan base so I really do respect my fans and appreciate all the love and support
that they put in. To people that correct me when I go wrong, I really
appreciate them too. To my fans out there, my advice remains constant that you
must always maintain a positive state of mind at every point in time. Never
allow yourself, your energy drop because in that way you’ll never function
properly, you can never give a hundred and always put God first and ask God to
direct you on your path. Everyone must not be an actor, so you need to identify
what your true calling is and be able to follow it. Because if you are meant to
be a doctor and you are pursuing acting desperately, you will go and hit a rock
meanwhile if you are a doctor you probably would have been the best doctor in
the world and be earning billions so always make sure that you hold God and
seek for you direction so that you go through that path and when you go through
that path don’t just hang in there and say that I’m an Actor, I’m an Actor, I’m
a Doctor, I’m a Doctor, constantly research because time change and you must
follow the changing times and evolve.