Genevieve Nnaji Biography
Genevieve Nnaji born on 3 May 1979 is a Nigerian actress, producer, and director.
She won the Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 2005, making her the first actor to win the award.
In 2011, she was honoured as a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic by the Nigerian government for her contributions to Nollywood.
Her directorial debut movie, Lionheart, is the first Netflix film from Nigeria and the first Nigerian submission for the Oscars. The movie was disqualified for having most of its dialogue in English.
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After having spent decades in the movie industry, she was profiled alongside some celebrities and business executives in 2020 in two new books by publisher and Editor in Chief of Yes International! magazine, Azuh Arinze.
Genevieve Nnaji Early life
Genevieve was born in Mbaise, Imo State, Nigeria, and grew up in Lagos. The fourth of eight children, she was raised in a middle-class family; her father worked as an engineer and her mother was a nursery school teacher.
Genevieve Nnaji Education
She attended Methodist Girls College (Yaba, Lagos), before proceeding to the University of Lagos, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative arts. While at the university, she began auditioning for acting jobs in Nollywood.
Genevieve Nnaji Career
Nnaji started her acting career as a child actor in the then-popular television soap opera Ripples at the age of 8. In 1998, at the age of 19, she was introduced into the growing Nigerian film industry with the movie Most Wanted. Her subsequent movies include Last Party, Mark of the Beast, and Ijele. In 2010, she starred in the award-winning film Ijé: The Journey. She has starred in over 200 Nollywood movies.
In 2004, Nnaji signed a recording contract with EKB Records; a Ghanaian record label, and released her debut album One Logologo Line. It is a mix of R&B, Hip-Hop, and Urban music. In 2004, Genevieve Nnaji was with the most votes after contending with other celebrities for the search for the face of Lux in 2004.
In 2005, she won the Africa Movie Academy Award (AMAA) for Best Actress in a Leading Role, becoming the first actress to win the award.
Genevieve Nnaji as a Model
Nnaji in one of her several modelling campaigns.
Nnaji has featured in several commercials, including for Pronto (beverage) and Omo detergent. In 2004, she became the “Face of Lux” in Nigeria in a highly lucrative sponsorship deal. In 2008, Nnaji launched the clothing line “St. Genevieve”, which donates its proceeds to charity. In May 2010, she was appointed to be the official “Face of MUD” in Nigeria.
Genevieve Nnaji Awards and nominations
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (June 2015)
Nnaji has received several awards and nominations for her work, including the Best Actress of the Year Award at the 2001 City People Awards and the Best Actress in a Leading Role Award at the 2005 Africa Movie Academy Awards.
In 2019, her movie, Lionheart, was selected by the Nigerian Oscars Selection Committee (NOSC), as Nigeria’s submission to the Best International Feature Film Category of the 2020 Oscars. It was the first film ever submitted to the Oscars by Nigeria.
Subsequently, the oscar submission was cancelled for not meeting the language criteria. The film’s dialogue track is predominantly in the English language. However, the Oscar rules since 2006 dictate that eligible movies must have a “Predominantly non-English dialogue track.” This move was an attempt to open up more opportunities for films from diverse cultures.
In a viral tweet on 4 November 2019, the Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay, had questioned the Academy’s decision on nixing Lionheart Oscar race for using its official language — English. Nnaji, in response to Ava DuVernay’s Tweet, took to Twitter to explain that the country Nigeria as presently constituted, does boast of over 500 languages, making it so ethnically diverse than English, as the official language, can only be the language utilized to make the movie widely acceptable to the eclectic audience across the country, and even beyond the continent of Africa.
In an article published by Culture writer and multiculturalism scholar- Kovie Biakolo titled Nigeria’s Lion Heart Disqualification is Bigger than the Oscars on the CNN opinion website; Kovie opined that “one cannot help but feel that Nigeria is ultimately being penalized for being a former British colony in using the very language that was imposed on its people, to communicate between them, and especially for art. Former French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies certainly don’t have this problem. And in truth, the Academy may be demonstrating a short-sighted or surface-level understanding of its purported inclusivity in this category”.
She went further to criticize the Oscar board for allowing the nominations of British movies that were not done in English, which invariably is the Country’s main language but did so in the case of Nigeria whose cultural diversity could be confounding yet true.
Genevieve Nnaji Pregnancy and breakthrough
Although Genevieve often auditioned for jobs in the already crowded Nigerian film business, she struggled to persuade directors and producers of her ability.
Genevieve Nnaji dropped out of secondary school after becoming pregnant and giving birth to her daughter, Chimebuka Theodora, at 17, which further inspired her to pursue an acting career.
Director Elvis Obaseki remembers witnessing Genevieve despondent and on the verge of tears when he opted against casting her in a film.
Obaseki had initially agreed to a payment of 1,500 naira (about 26,000 naira in today’s economy) but had a change of heart due to budgetary restrictions.
However, the pendulum came full circle five years later when Obaseki offered Genevieve a fee equivalent to 2.5 million naira in today’s currency to feature in a film at the height of her popularity; she declined.
Genevieve Nnaji’s professional debut came in 1998, at the age of 19, when she was featured in Ralph Nwadike’s Most Wanted in a cameo role as a news reporter.
Two years later, City People Magazine recognised her as the Best Actress of 2001, a first for the respected publication, which had hitherto only honoured political and corporate figures.
Genevieve Nnaji’s husband
Why is Genevieve not married?
Genevieve has never married and claimed in October 2015 that the dread of a failed marriage is the primary restraining factor.
“If I get married, I want to stay married, and staying married is not easy. It means you are completely in tune with your partner.
“It means you have found your soul mate and will have to be able to stand a lot of disappointments that will definitely come, but then again, you have to learn how to forgive,” Genevieve stated.
This dreadful anxiety may explain why the actress has been involved in a number of unsuccessful relationships.
Okechukwu Joseph, a well-known Nollywood actor, referred to their brief romance as “a disaster,” while Pat Attah, who also dated the actress for just two years, characterised their relationship as “great.”
Genevieve Nnaji daughter and baby daddy
Genevieve Nnaji and daughter, Chimebuka Theodora, share a selfie
In 1999, at the young age of 17, Genevieve Nnaji gave birth to her daughter, Chimebuka Theodora, ultimately leading to her dropping out of school.
Genevieve admitted in an interview with the now-defunct Treasure Magazine that she did not discover her pregnancy until the fourth month, which ruled out any possibility of an abortion.
“Getting rid of the pregnancy was an alternative then, but it was too late, because not until I was four months before we discovered it and so it was not what we could do,” she said.
In addition, Genevieve Nnaji revealed that her parents were unaware of her condition until the seventh month of her pregnancy.
The actress has never disclosed Theodora’s father, although in 2008, a US-based socialite, Dotun Oladipo, also known as Acura, denied fatherhood when Genevieve’s relatives fingered him.
Dotun Oladipo, aka Acura, is the purported father of Genevieve’s daughter
Acura did not dispute having an affair with the then-17-year-old actress, but he demanded a DNA test before any admission.
Acura who was 20 at the time insinuated in an old interview with NollywoodGist that Genevieve had multiple partners throughout their fling:
“I was not the only one she was seeing as of the time she got pregnant. There was another guy involved who still leaves here in Egebda,” stated Acura in 2008.
Theodora reportedly grew up with foster parents because Acura failed to assume parental obligations, compelling Genevieve to send her to a childless couple in Lagos so she could continue her schooling.
Until her marriage, Theodora supposedly grew up in this environment.
The information in this article was curated from online sources. All details cannot be independently verified by Daily News 24 or its editorial team.
