How I Have Stayed Relevant As An Actor For 40 Yrs

• Veteran Actor, NORBERT YOUNG

In Nollywood today, there are indeed a lot of fantastic actors but yet, some actors are greater than others. And if the entire story of Nollywood is written tomorrow, the name Norbert Young will definitely be one of those names that will occupy a special place as one of the greats of the industry. If truth be told, there aren’t too many tested actors who can hold a candle close to this outstanding thespian. His works and accomplishments in the movie industry speak volume of his extraordinary talents and contributions to the profession. Married to another fantastic actress, the gorgeous Gloria Anozie Young, Norbert Young started his acting career over thirty-eight years ago and is still waxing strong. Interestingly, this brilliant gentleman does not look anything like a man who’s been in the industry for that long. He’s still young looking, very agile and could fit into nearly every role available for him to play. Many would still remember with nostalgia his exploits in hugely successful television dramas back in the 80s such as The Third Eye, Telemovies and the big one, Checkmate. Today, decades after, Norbert Young is still holding his own pretty well in the ever competitive movie industry and giving the much younger actors a good run for their money. He still features regularly in movies, particularly cinema movies, and is also a constant feature in some of the top quality weekly dramas on television. A week ago, City People’s Senior Editor, WALE LAWAL (08037209290) had the rare privilege to speak with the award winning actor and got him to share with us his humble beginning in the industry and his thoughts on the exploits of the new generation of actors in the industry.

Share with us, sir, your thoughts on the new generation of actors, have they met the sort of standards people like you and your contemporaries brought to the table?

To answer this question could take like two days. But suffice to say that they are actually doing well. I have always insisted that people should be trained in this business and to a large extent, some of them I know personally have been training themselves, going to institutions here in Nigeria and abroad and also learning from people who are their senior colleagues. So a lot of training is going on right now and I think AGN, NANTAP and the rest are taking them through some form of training within their organizations. And if you look at it, training still remains the best way to improve. Civil service in those days, I don’t know if they still do it, they used to do programmes they called refresher courses, to upgrade themselves and keep abreast with what is happening.

A lot of the young ones are doing that now. You know, most of us who came from the old set –up, we were all well trained in the university, in drama, but many of these young ones were not trained in the traditional drama school but because they have interest in this profession most of them are now training themselves and seeking improvement but the questions is, what do they do with this training that they have received? I keep telling them that one of the ways to succeed is discipline. If you really look at what we do, people call it play. And what do we really do? We play. But the only way to make it meaningful is when you are disciplined about it, that’s when people who are watching you will take you seriously, but if you just play away your time, no direction, and you just think you can get away with it, how far will you go? Don’t forget that younger ones are coming and they’re ready to knock you off the stage anytime and show more commitment than you do, so where will you be? But, my worry is, do they really apply themselves? They are trained, I agree, but are they using their training to the optimum?

I think it’s common knowledge that the state of the economy has badly battered the movie industry and the advent of social media too hasn’t exactly helped matters, although some have argued that it has done more good than harm, but do you honestly think the industry is on the rise again?

Well, to be frank with you, money is always a factor all over the world in anything that we do. As big as Hollywood and Bollywood are, they still have problems of financing. You see people still making grade B, grade C and even grade D movies, it’s all a matter of financing. It’s a general problem, but I think a lot of people in Nigeria haven’t seen the seriousness in this business enough to be willing to invest, especially now that we have cinemas which enable you not to leave your works in the hands of marketers who may decide not to market your work properly. We now have cinemas where you can do exhibitions and then you can monitor all cinemas in the country and abroad before you go to the residual value which is home video. If we do proper accounting and stock taking, there’s huge dividends in terms of employment, in terms of regeneration and fulfilment. It’s a big one. A lot of people don’t realize this. And we do have the population to buy good works. Investors should be able to come in and say, let’s invest in this project. The economy, usually should not affect entertainment. In a depression, it’s only entertainment that really sells and we knew that it’s not going to be different in Nigeria.

There is something I’ll like you to address, sir. Some people believe most of the younger artists are only popular on social media, whereas, people like you cannot walk down a street and not find mothers, fathers, and even children coming to greet you and acknowledge you, which explains why some movie producers still insist on working with the older generation of actors. But what we hear is that the younger actors are making more impact in the industry right now. What is your take on this?

Okay, the thing is, the world is changing and social media is the in thing right now. A lot of advertisers choose the talents for their brands amongst the actors based on the number of followers the actors have on Instagram. That’s what the younger ones do, so it seems they’re getting the market from the advertisers perspective because everybody is on the social media. Now, some of us that are old school, we depend basically on our talent that has kept us all the time, from those early, difficult days to now. You’re correct, it’s the new trend but what can we do about it? It’s what is happening. It’s like saying you want to wipe away the old politicians for the new ones, no, there must be a mix. If you allow only the young ones to come and take over, they will fall into certain pit holes the older ones had fallen into earlier and so they would be able to guide the younger ones, so there must be a mix.

A lot of us are still relevant in the business, we have gone beyond just acting and they now call us mentors. We have a lot of people that we speak to every time, to encourage them to be serious minded and to achieve great things in life. So, we are still relevant in our own sense. And as it is, there’s no way movies will not continue to involve every strata of society, be it the young, middle aged and old. Like I always say, the actor only retires at old age. Let the young ones enjoy the young roles. Then the old ones will enjoy the old roles and sometimes they can cut across, you know what I mean. It’s really interesting. Some people say the younger ones know how to package themselves better than us, and I tend to agree with them. For some of us, our love for this profession did not let us look at the business side of things, but these young ones are very sharp, they see the business first before the talent and that’s why they’re all over the place. It’s the trend, you can’t fight it. The younger ones are coming that will upstage them too, so you have to hold your brand firmly.

Can you put a figure to the number of years you have been in the industry and perhaps tell us the movie that gave you your breakthrough?

I did my first professional job in 1984. I started from Benin in the old Bendel State with Martin Aaron, may his soul rest in peace, with David Kokori, may his soul rest in peace too. I acted alongside great actors like Ogbemudia in Hotel De Jordan. So, I had the privilege of working with these great actors and then we did a series in Benin. So, before I came to Lagos, I was already a local star in Bendel State, so for this, I will say the NTA and Bendel Broadcasting Service gave me that exposure in Benin. And then in Lagos, NTA also gave me the exposure. I started with Tele movies and then Third Eye before Checkmate. Checkmate was really the one that launched us, you had no choice then but to watch NTA. And if you remember then, the streets used to be empty from Thursday evenings to Fridays, Saturday and Sundays, every evening people were rushing to watch Checkmate, Ripples, Supple Blues. So, we were very popular because you had to watch only one channel, NTA. This affects the younger generation now because there’s so many stations to watch and so you can’t get so many people to watch you at the same time like we had.

Could the problem also be because we no longer have quality soaps that can compete favourably with the Mexican soaps, the ZEE Worlds?

No, there are lots of quality soaps but you and I may not know all of them because they’re in different channels. You see, for the Mexican soaps, anytime, they will beat us because of our penchant for foreign things. It’s not that they’re necessarily better than us, but more advertisers will rather go for something they won’t have to pay production fee for. With the Mexican soaps, they would only have to pay for airtime, but for us, they would have to take care of production costs and pay the artiste’s fees as well and you won’t blame them because everybody wants to make profit. But if you’re basically a patriotic Nigerian, you will patronize and sponsor more of your own production because a lot of our stories are yet untold so we need people who have the money to come and give us the financial muscle to enable us tell our own stories ourselves.