Ikponmwosa Gold knows what he wants exactly. That is one reason the actor, who is a native of Oronigbe in Edo State, left his marketing job at Nigerian Breweries (NB) in Lagos for Abuja.
“I left (Oronigbe) for Lagos. From Lagos, I went to school in University of Ibadan (UI). From there, back to Lagos and then to Abuja,” he said in an interview in Lagos where he was attending the Nollywood Movies Awards (NMA) that nominated him for his role in the film, Confusion Na Wa.
Ask him why he went to Abuja and Ikponmwosa, who said when he obtained his theatre arts degree, he didn’t even think he would even major in acting, explained that it was to ‘start life’ that he and a friend left for Abuja in 2005.
As it turned out, that was a good move. Hardly had he settled down in Abuja than he started getting acting jobs, including for the BBC-produced television soap, Wetin Dey?
“When I got to Abuja, I started this social drama called Area 11 Centre where I played the vendor. From there, I did Dominoes, Tajudeen Adepetu’s soap where I played the professor. Then we moved to 168 Hours also from Tajudeen (Adepetu). From there, we started Wetin Dey? which was where Kenneth Gyang and I met and he did say that after Wetin Dey? he would love me to be in a film that he would want to do,” said Ikponmwosa.
He was talking about Confusion Na Wa, for which the NMA nominated him for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role. His first nomination for that film that is also his first was for the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) last year.
The actor, who is looking to do many more films and is currently on the set of one such Nigerian film, has no intention of eventually directing a film.
“I have no intention to direct; I am okay as an actor. I was telling someone recently that it is only in this part of the world that people feel that as you are growing from actor, you should become a writer, a producer. No, if you are not cut out for it, please do not go for it,” he said.
The actor, who said one has to be flexible in the world, also writes scripts for stage, many of which have been produced.
“I was trained on the stage as a theatre practitioner, and coming out to the industry or becoming a professional, you need also to work on your voice to make it saleable. I take every script as a new challenge. So when a script comes, I clear my mind of the fact that I have done anything. We are told that there are about seven billion people on the surface of the earth; you should be able to interpret that script in a way that it reaches at least one billion people,” he said.