SUCCESSFUL IGBO ACTORS ARE HELP BY THEIR BROTHERS-Antar Laniyan

Source: Babajide Ogunbumi/Nigeriafilms.com
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For Antar Laniyan, a versatile actor and consummate director, the sizzling romance with acting started professionally 32 years ago. But an average actor in the English home movie sector earns much more than his counterpart in the Yoruba movie industry. The reasons have been well outlined by Antar Laniyan who has become a director of sort. In a chat with a media personality recently where it was required of him to decide who earns big bucks out of Genevieve Nnaji and Mercy Aigbe in the Yoruba genre where he reign supreme.

This is what he said ``Is Genevieve earning her money from acting alone? Let me tell you the life of an average Igbo actor. If you are a successful Igbo actor, your rich Ibo brother will ask you about the brand of car you are driving. If you tell him the kind of car you have, the rich Ibo man will say, 'come, I have a jeep, so come and take it, if you like it. And he can even give you money. But how many people can do that in our own set up (Yoruba)? The Ibo man will help his brother, not necessarily because of what he wants to gain, but just to lift him. I doff my hat for Ibo people and I wish we could be doing that in our own sector too.``


With this, it still wonders people, Antar fans why he has not dumped the Yoruba genre that he's and join the English movie where he started from but he said, the grasses at the other side of the sea are always greener. ``Yes, I started there, but there is some marginalization, which we have been fighting all the while. We keep saying that an actor is an actor, irrespective of his or her tribe or medium of expression. I want all the artistes to stay under one umbrella. Even though there will be associations, guilds and all that, there will still be an umbrella with a unique name that we will belong to,`` was her word.