I’ll never appear nude in movies -Ronnie Dim

I was doing my service when I went into Nollywood, so I was in Nollywood till 2009. I have worked with Charley Boy for four years. I actually just stopped working with him a few months back. I took two years break from Nollywood, because I wanted to do other things. We always have what […]

I was doing my service when I went into Nollywood, so I was in Nollywood till 2009. I have worked with Charley Boy for four years. I actually just stopped working with him a few months back. I took two years break from Nollywood, because I wanted to do other things. We always have what we call our first love. For me, acting has always been my first love. So, no matter where you go, you will still come back unless you were doing it for money. If you were doing it because you love creativity or what comes out at the end of the day, after being on location and shooting, no matter where you go, you will still come back to acting. The years I worked with Charley Boy was really awesome, because he is somebody who will push you to be creative. He will tell you that the challenge you think you cannot crush, you can actually crush it. At the end of the day, you find out that “O I crushed it”. It was then that I find out that “O I’m making money, what can I do?” and I started my business.

You mean you have not done anything in the industry since you left?

I just finished shooting a movie in Niger State. I produced the movie and I just finished shooting in May. The movie is not yet in the market.

What did you study in school?

I studied Hospitality and Tourism Management at Imo State University.

How many movies have you done?

I shot 25 movies

What were the most challenging movies you have shot?

In that 25, the most challenging ones are Mad Ghost, Sacred Blood or Hard Solution. When you watch them, you will know that some work actually went into those movies. Mad Ghost was so stressful that for four days, it just came down on me. I was playing the lead and it was too much on me. It was too challenging. I had to put on the ghost contact lens every day, take it off every day. There was a time I couldn’t see very well; it was crazy for me. Then, the Sacred Blood where I and my sisters were all married but we couldn’t have kids and our mom played by Patience Ozokwo, who apparently was the cause of our problem, had to take us to a spiritualist to find solution to our problems without knowing she was the cause. And it got to a point where we needed to pass through the forest; we had to pass through a river on a boat and I was crazy because I don’t go to the river. I hate river because I always heard some bad stories in Nollywood. I usually feel I don’t have any business with river, but we later did. Before we did that, we had to hold each other’s hands and prayed. If you watched the movie, you could see how I was holding her; you will know I was scared. Then, I had Cyberia. It is a soap opera that it is for the matured mind. If you start watching it in the middle, you might not understand, because it is highly intellectual. For that reason, you find out that African Magic will finish it this season and Magic World will take over. I did it three years back, but until tomorrow, it is still running. It was nice.

Did your parents support you when you wanted to start acting?

My parents are very educated, but they are usually very indifferent when it comes to things like that, if you say that is what you want to do. They just support, advise and tell you how you should go about it. They tell you what you should do and what not to do and that is it.

What lessons have you learned being an actress?

I have learnt that if you are not careful you will never have a private life again.

What is it like being an actress?

The best part is that you can just enter into anywhere. They will just let you in. You can enter any office and people will want to do things for you, you can just get to the airport and many people want to pay your ticket to travel. It feels good when people walk up to you and say that your movie made them laugh. Somebody once told me that she saw my movie and that day she was really in a bad mood and she tuned in to African Magic and that was the movie that was showing and it brought too much laughter to her face, to her life. When she ran into me, she said ‘your movie revived me’ and I said ‘thank you’. I am happy when people tell me ‘oh, that movie you did, I learnt something from it; I could pick inspiration from it’. Most of all, I am happy that in as much as I am an actress, I haven’t lost myself. I am still me and still very original. What I cannot do, I cannot do.

Even in the movie?

In movies, there are definitely things you will not ask me to do. You cannot ask me to wear swimming trunk, I will not wear, they know. I am not the bikini ones.

Does that mean you cannot appear nude in a movie?

No, why would I want to appear nude. I would not want to appear nude. This is Africa. In Africa, we do not appear nude. No matter how you look at it or what anybody tries to do, you do not appear nude. In Africa, we have custom, we have tradition, we have parents who will not want their children to watch any kind of movie and you want everybody to watch your movie, common on! Then since you want everyone to see your movie, then you have to choose what to do. You should be able to say, ‘I am not going to do this’, ‘I am going to do this’.

What changes do you want to see in our movie industry?

The scriptwriters should stop copying stories from an already produced foreign movie. You go and watch a foreign movie, you just copy, change and write it and our actors and actresses come and act it. They should stop it. They should be creative, think, research and write a story. When a story is original, it is beautiful to act. I say to myself that when I’m coming back to the Nollywood, most of the movies that I will feature in, I have to be the one to produce them. I have to be in my own movies. The one we shot in Niger State, we shot it for one month. It was a whole research and I had errors even at that. When everybody had finished and left, I entered studio to edit and I found errors and I called most of them back, Segun Arinze was there, Chika Ike was in the movie too. I called all of them back to location again and they came back to shoot. I paid for hotel bill and welfare again just for them to come back and get a good job done.

What is the movie?

It is called The Chief Servant. It is the movie on the Niger State Governor. The movie is also centered on him, his giant strides and what he has been able to do for the people of Niger State and how he actually came about being a governor.