Many Nollywood actors are social media stars —Segun Arinze

Veteran actor, Segun Arinze, has taken a swipe at the current crop of Nollywood actors and actresses, describing them as social media stars who are not well grounded in the arts.

Arinze, who was a guest on Emannuel Ugolee’s TV show, The Gist, maintained that it was becoming worrisome for him and some veteran actors seeing what is now being descibed as new Nollywood by today’s thespians.

The actor said it was wrong for the new set of actors to claim that new Nollywood, displaced the old Nollywood aside, adding that he was taken aback reading such comments coming from today’s acts in the English version of Nollywood. Arinze, branded the new set of actors as pretentious, saying “Today’s set of Nollywood actors are not grounded. What they know how to do is to speak phonetics.”

According to him, any serious actor will never rule out training. He said that constant training was important to bring out the best in any actor that wants to fly above his colleagues.

Arinze, who said talent is not enough to take any actor far in the entertainment industry, added that “I am sorry to say this but the truth is that today’s crop of Nollywood actors are not grounded. Talent is not the only thing you need, you also have to be grounded.”

He added that the current structure of Nollywood does not portray one as a serious actor, but one that wants to be popular.

“Most of these guys are pretentious. They are only interested in who has the highest number of likes or followers on their social media platforms. Most of them are not even disciplined and they lack the knowledge. They only want to be popular,” he said.