Clarion Chukwurah was inspired to go into acting as a five-year old watching Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. “Right from there, it was acting or nothing else,” she recalls. Her earliest stint as an actress was when she played the roles of Lady Macbeth and Mary Magdalene on stage at her school.

After completing secondary school, she moved to Ibadan where she joined the University of Ibadan Performing Company as a trainee actor. She would later leave Ibadan to study acting and speech at the University of Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University).

A versatile actress, Clarion has succeeded in moving effortlessly from stage to film and television, and has since maintained a powerful presence on all fronts. After 25 years in acting, she is looked upon as one of the best of the lot. Her performances have garnered her awards and recognition. She has performed on stage and film in Cameroon, Uganda, Mexico, and England, among others.

Worthy of note is her appearance in a staged version of Things Fall Apart at Leeds University in England where she was cast as one of the chiefs of Umuofia. Among her most memorable roles is Yemoja in the movie Oduduwa where she could be described as nothing short of a show stealer. She ascribes this ability to bring out her best even in the most insignificant characters, to her training and experience. “Without my training, I would not be able to pull it off,” she says.

Speaking on the negative reception that dogged the early part of her career, the 45-year-old beauty says, “Of course, I cared about the way (actors) were viewed. But since I was inspired by the American film industry, I decided to go about it like a professional and started by giving myself an academic background in acting so that I would be taken seriously. Also, because that was what I wanted to be and where my talent lies, I did not feel odd. Instead, I felt that the society was odd and needed to get with it.”

These days, Clarion, who at the beginning of the phenomenon called Nollywood was one of the most familiar faces in movies, has restricted her appearances only to non-Nollywood productions. She bases her reason for bowing out from the Nollywood scene on her disgust at the rather poor standards in the Nigeria Film Industry. “When I went from soaps to Nollywood, it was largely controlled by professionals from television. These producers, directors and writers were the ones who started Nollywood and as fellow trained professionals, it was easy for me to flow with them. By and by as Nollywood sank, it became an all-comers affair; a land for opportunists.”

She describes the current crop of Nollywood artistes as run-of-the-mill, and derides the situation where producers lobby for marketers to finance their work, thus compromising standards in the process. She condemns And move from one professional level within the industry to another without proper training, “Imagine a situation where an actor suddenly becomes a producer after two years in the industry or a continuity person a director after only three years,” she remarks. Her chief grouse with Nollywood, however, lies with the name. “The name is one of the reasons why the industry is falling to the rocks,” she exclaims. “When I started out, it was the Nigeria Film Industry which by the way has been around since 1958.”

Clarion recently launched her new clothing line ‘C3.’ The new line, geared towards the average Nigerian between the ages of 14 and 54, hopes to redefine what work and casual day wear is supposed to look like. For a fashion enthusiast like Clarion, starting a clothing line comes as no surprise. However, despite the fact that this is a new outlet for her creativity, she maintains that acting is her first love.

She describes C3 (Clarion Chukwurah Clothing), as an urban clothing line. “I am not a designer,” she clarifies with emphasis. “I am just an actress who has decided to fill a vacuum with my brand. I employ designers.” For someone often associated with the upper-class of society, Clarion explains her choice of target market: “Clarion Chukwurah, as a person, is high-class; but Clarion Chukwurah, as a brand, is a household affair. I want to cater to the Nigerian working class and not the CEOs and I want people to wear my clothes massively.”

(naijarules.com adapted)