My Nollywood personality for this week is Desmond Elliot.
Nollywood
actor cum director Desmond Shola Elliot is well known for his lover-boy roles
in movies. (I specifically remember him for his role with Kate Henshaw in Tade Ogidan’s A Christmas passion and his role with Stella Damasus in Tade Ogidan’s Missing
Angel).
In this interview, he discloses a lot about his personal life.
1 He was born to a Yoruba father and Igbo mum.
2 He screams a lot on set while directing but “the good thing about me is that
when I scream that is where it stops. I don’t take it to heart.”
3 He now
accepts only movie roles that would make him slim down “you get to that point
in your career; money is not the issue anymore. Like now, I cannot take normal
roles. I have to take something that would make me want to lose so much weight
or put on so much weight or talk in a certain way”
4 He is happily married to his wife and they
have four beautiful children (two set of twins, Desmond, Denzel, Donald
and Donna).
#5 He has
co-produced “about five or six movies, Guilty Pleasures, Holding Hope, Reloaded
and some others. I have not single-handedly produced any except the movie I am
going to Sierra Leone to shoot for one month. It’s called Reflections”
#6 He runs a
Non-governmental organization. Desmond, who claims that he has never been a
play boy, said “I run an NGO called
Desmond Elliot Foundation…What we do in the foundation is to sensitize people
on water, sanitation and hygiene and we have been doing that for almost four
years now.
7 when asked
how his mother reacted on seeing on him on screen for the first time, Desmond
who is often called Shola at home, said “she
was excited… (Who wouldn’t be) the
first time she saw me on screen was in a movie, Suitors, where I played an
extra role.
8 He is likely to have another set of twins “Twins run in
my wife’s family. The first set of twins, I was grateful and happy. The second
one I was not in the country when she called me and told me about it and I
didn’t believe it…I was not expecting it. (Baba
onibeji) Now, I am hoping to have three more eventually. I want seven
children. I am in love with children.”
9 He has been married for 9 years but kids did not come till after
his marriage was 4years. “It affected me then. I have always
wanted kids. It didn’t come and I was wondering what was happening…My wife
panicked and you know we had to go for tests like two years later and it was
just a question of being patient. We went to hospitals both at home and abroad.
Of course, you get worried and unsettled. It’s the kind of problem especially
when you know you are not the kind that did all those rascally stuff.”
10 His wife bounced him by giving him a No when he first asked her out
“I met her in
school, University of Jos. We were in the same church. We are church people. We
met and one thing led to another and we started becoming close. I fell in love
and I asked…if she would be my girlfriend and she said no…but now we are so in
love…