Victoria Inyama Dishes On Being An Actress

Nollywood actress, Victoria Inyama in a chat with Saturday Beats has talked about things she feels make the profession look embarrassing compared to how it was when she started her career.

Victoria Inyama who made her movie debut with a soap opera titled Ripples between 1998/1999; after she was discovered by Alex Usifo who invited her over for an audition, said;

“My days in the industry were lovely; there was so much love; there was so much hard work. People wanted to act for acting sake, they didn’t want to act because of money. We were competing with who could cry the most, memorise long lines the most, who was the saddest character and stuffs like that unlike now that it is all about unnecessary competition like cars and houses. Back then, it was just innocent and genuine competition. It wasn’t for the fame but integrity.

“The truth is, these days it is an embarrassment being called an actress. You want to be called something else because there is no respect for that name anymore. Sometimes, I can’t wait to qualify as a psychologist so that when you think of Victoria Inyama, it will be in another light. Those in the industry now are doing a lot of things that shouldn’t be done in 2018. It is not just one particular thing that they should stop doing; from the picture, story line, artistes and costumes, some of them are just weird and out of place. Once I see certain names in the production, I don’t even bother,” she said.

Victoria Inyama who narrated how she survived a cancer battle after she moved to the U.K, said;

“I snapped back fast after surviving cancer because we have the medical amenities here and there is adequate aftercare and treatment. So it was just left to me to live the right lifestyle in terms of food intake and taking things easy. The whole process of me surviving cancer taught me humility and also to appreciate life more.

“It started while I was in Nigeria, I used to have serious pain on the left side of my head, I went to notable hospitals and they used to say I had migraine, they gave me drugs for migraine. None of the hospitals bothered to do a proper MRI scan or anything like that. But when I got married and I had to relocate, it got worse and I had to be checked. They found out that I had some cancerous growth in my head; that was in 2005. The medics started the treatment almost immediately. I got married in 2003 and relocated in 2004; when they noticed it, I had just got pregnant with my first child. When I got pregnant, the pain subsided,” she said