One of Nigeria’s most accomplished and gifted actors, Deyemi Okanlawon, has shared his story of leaving a corporate job to pursue acting full-time.
Deyemi has appeared in almost all of Nigeria’s blockbuster movies. From Elesin Oba to the Brotherhood to the Blood Sisters.
He revealed that acting has always been his dream job during a recent interview with Top Charts Africa.
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According To His Word;
As an actor I’m an entrepreneur, a creative enterpreneur. I offer a very valuable mix of services, my craft, my business experience and my brand reputation, to producers and audiences as well as brands and business partners.
My first memories of acting was when I was four or five years old in primary school plays that you ever saw. On campus I got involved with a faith based drama group and I was the head of the youth drama department at my church which I took it quite seriously – it was my ministry and what I believed at that time to be my purpose and one of the many things God wanted me to do.
At first I was having fun and then it became something I really truly loved and became passionate about – all the while I didn’t realize that I was honing a skill. After dabbling from 2010 and seeing an opportunity in the space, I quit my job as the head of marketing in OLX in 2013 to pursue a career in acting. My engineering mind plus my experience in sales and marketing allowed me to strategize and do things differently.
I’m very methodical in the way that I approach everything from reading scripts and breaking down characters and stories, to figuring out solutions to my business challenges, to discovering new services I can render to producers and brands.