Nollywood queen, Omotola Jalade-Ekehinde or Omosexy as she’s fondly called, is a successful actress by all standards. In an interview, Omotola who made the prestigious Time magazine’s list of Top 100 Most Influential Persons in the World, shares her success story.
Excerpts:
Tips on how to be a successful woman: It actually starts with character, personality and what beliefs. Everything wrong today actually started from the content of a character. Are you immoral or are you straight forward enough to actually say something and carry through with it. Is the content of your character strong enough? I believe that for you to be great in anything, you have to be someone anyone can trust.you believe in. It stems from your moral
What success means to Omotola: I think success is when God is happy with you. When the closest people around you are happy with you and when your soul is at peace with you.
About the greatest achievement: I have so many great achievements and I am very grateful to God. I can talk about great achievements today because God has empowered me to build my character. At no point did I see all these coming. I never said, ‘let me start being a good girl so that in the future, they will call me to speak, not only on Nollywood but also in mentorship capacity outside Nollywood’. I never said ‘okay, let me be a good girl so that Time magazine will make me a Time 100 woman’; I never thought about all these things. But by God`s grace, I am here today. He taught me to follow a particular life pattern when I was young. And I am grateful that pattern has brought me this far. My greatest achievement is that I got to know God on time; it was a great privilege.
About fears and crying: Don’t believe me when I cry because I might actually be trying to get something out of you (Laughter). My husband says he doesn’t know when to take me serious, whether it’s when I am crying or sober. But I am naturally a very emotional person, quite frankly. I hate injustice; I can’t stand it. When I see somebody who is helpless, I feel like that person’s humanity has been taken away from him and that makes me cry.
Advice for young people: Put in everything you have and believe in something. My point is that you should be passionate about something. Don’t sit on the fence; we have so many people sitting on the fence. Most importantly, set high standards and connect to high self-esteem. We all need each other. We all need someone to help us up when we are down.
About staying scandal free: People will always speculate about you and it could be very disheartening, especially when you have chosen to live right. I don’t want to sound like some holier-than-though whatever, but I work very hard to keep my brand away from scandals. I have fought. I have had to and I will not accept for you to humiliate me before everybody’. Often they try to be mischievous but I stick to my guns. Oftenstand and say, ‘hey! This is what I stand for times they have also turned around to say sorry. For heaven’s sake, I am responsible for the actions and decisions that I take.
SOURCES: Daily Sun Newspaper, Naij.com news