Nollywood actress Deyemi Okanlawon has shared his motivation for quitting his position as a big company’s head of marketing in order to pursue a career in the film business.
Acting was one of the many things Deyemi said God intended him to pursue in an interview with Top Charts Africa.
He claimed that up until he became passionate about it, acting was just something he enjoyed doing. He then made the decision to leave his job and seek a career in Nollywood.
Deyemi Okanlawon continued by saying that his background in engineering and expertise in sales and marketing help him analyze and approach problems differently.
He said: “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.”
