Veteran Nollywood actor Kanayo O. Kanayo claims it takes a great deal of work, perseverance, energy, patience, and dedication to navigate the complex maze of the profession.
This is all while claiming that he puts in more work and is a better actor than well-known Hollywood star Denzel Washington because he works more.
In an interview with the Honest Bunch podcast, Kanayo made a claim.
He said that terrible parts do not make lousy performers, drawing a comparison between his film roles and that of Hollywood’s Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He stated that Nollywood actors like himself, put in so much work to act and produce good movies unlike what is seen today.
“If Denzel Washington puts in the number of hours I put in a production here, his colour will change to charcoal the next day,” Kanayo said.
He recounted that Americans from New York studied the Nollywood industry in 1992 and were amazed at the efforts and technicalities they put into production.
According to him, American Actors coined the name ‘Nollywood’ out of the seemingly ‘Nothingwood’ it was.
“They have come to understudy us. Americans from New York came to study us, they said guys, ‘we see some efforts here and there, these things take us about one month to sort, how come you achieve it in one week?’ So it was now a course of study for them, they saw the zeal we put in.”