Celebrated actress, Foluke Daramola Salako, has revisited how she became a professional actress.
She identifies Nollywood great, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, as her major inspiration, based on how the latter dazzlingly performed in the film, ‘Mortal Inheritance’.
Salako, however, adds that necessity actually led her into the Thespina business.
She recalls in an interview with ‘The Nation’: “Actually, Nollywood came as a refuge and a source of help to me in my time of need. I lost my father when I was only three. By the time I got admitted into the university, my mother, a poor widow, was struggling to support my sibling and I through school. She couldn’t maintain two children in university at the same time.
“Before I left secondary school, I had already started doing talk shows on DBN TV with Chichi Okaro. I was also on Our Time on AIT. So, acting came as a way for me to balance things in my life. I had always admired people like Omotola Jalade when she starred in ‘Mortal Inheritance’. When I watched that movie, I looked at Omotola and thought; I think I can do this.
“When my mentors, Tunji Bamisigbin, Ralph Nwadike, and the late Charles Owoyemi, started ‘Palace’, I had a very close friend, Bisola, whom we were watching the series together, and she said, ‘Ah, I have a crush on Antar Laniyan. I would love him to be my boyfriend in a movie,’ and I said, ‘I would love Jide Kosoko to be my father in a movie.’
“At the time, it was just teenage fantasies. But, lo and behold, we were at AIT, just chatting in the reception area, and Uncle Charles and Uncle Tunji suddenly asked, ‘Do you guys want to act’? I immediately said yes. They asked what movie set we would like to be on, and we both shouted, ‘Palace.’ Then he turned to me and said, You’re going to be Jide Kosoko’s daughter. And to Bisola, he said, you’re going to be Antar Laniyan’s girlfriend. But the twist was that she later discovered she was actually his daughter in the movie. It was like our teenage dreams just came true.
The next challenge, she adds, was her mother, who was worried when she wanted to embrace acting, which was then viewed with strong caution.
The actress says, “Fortunately or unfortunately, when we went for our first shoot, I ended up being featured in the teaser, the advert for ‘Palace’. One day, I was at home with my mom, and she was watching TV when the teaser came on. She turned to me and said, Foluke, is that not you? I quickly denied it, I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. It was really funny. Eventually, I had to take my mentors to our house to convince her that I would still go to school, that I wouldn’t let acting affect my education, and that I would graduate top of my class.
“She was worried that people would say, ‘Oh, because she’s the daughter of a widow, that’s why she’s gone astray’. So, I had to prove to her and everyone else that I could succeed in both academics and acting.”
