Jennifer Eliogu Quotes

Music is just like art. And both talents are innate. You must be artistically inclined to be creative. So, it’s the art in me that has found expressions through music.

It started with Husbands of Lagos and Mary Njoku kept on calling me that she had me in mind to play her mother in law. I was going to be mother to Kenneth Okoli, I couldn't be that much older than Kenneth. But this is make believe. But guess what? When I did it, it was a success, and what happens with such characters is that everybody now writes characters with you in mind to play that. So you find that you see a lot of my movies where I play mother and people start to look at you [as if you're older than you are]. Was I worried for a bit? Yes, I was because you find, especially in our industry, that nobody wants to grow old. It doesn't matter, it's okay how old you decide to be. It's in the mind.

Getting back into the industry [after I had gone to get married and have my children] was difficult, because there was this bridge between the young girls, my set of girls, and the mummies. You don't have a lot of roles where my set of girls - let's call us 'ladies' - so girls, ladies, mamas, there were not a lot of roles for we ladies. It was a little tough because most of the roles then were between young girls (sweet 16, 18, 25) or you're playing the mummy role. So you don't have a lot of roles where we easily fit in. And then after a while, roles would come and people would say "please play this person's mother" and I was like play who's mother? Initially, I didn't want to play it because I was like I can't come and be borning people that are almost my age. But then after a while, I was like give it a shot.

When people say you're forever young, I laugh, becaus people judge you based on how long they've seen you on screen so they assume that you are as old as the length of the career. I don't bother trying to explain it, it doesn't make sense. So some people will see me and say "oh, you're aging gracefully", and I'm like are you kidding me right now? What happened to starting out early? But hey, the fact that I'm still here 25 years. I came to the industry in 1997 but I actually started acting in 1998.

Exceptional talent, (not nudity) is what guarantees one’s relevance in this industry; we all come to that realisation over time.