Iconic yoruba actor, Alhaji Taiwo Hassan popularly known as Ogogo has been making the news recently. This is due to his surprising journey into the music industry from Nollywood which has got many tongues wagging.

Ogogo recently made further revelations where he disclosed that he was actually trained as a Mechanic and infact used to be a civil servant before embracing the make belief industry full time.
Excerpts...

Do you feel accomplished as an actor?
Yes, I feel fulfilled and I thank Almighty Allah for his mercies and goodness. As far as I am not dead, I am still working to be better at everything I do. So far so good, I give thanks to God.

Why did you leave your job in the civil service for acting?
I retired. I really love the acting profession and I have been doing it for a long time. I began acting even before I started working for the water corporation. I began acting in 1981 shortly after I got a job at the water corporation as an auto-mechanic. I worked at the water corporation for about 13 years before I decided to face my acting career. That was in 1994. I am sure not many people believe that I trained as a mechanic.

How were you able to combine your civil service job with your acting career?
I always made sure that any production I partook in was on a weekend or during my annual leave.

What was your ambition as a child?
To be honest, all I knew was that I wanted to be someone great in life. I never knew that I would be involved in the entertainment industry while growing. I just admired the glitz and glamour. I think my love for entertainment can be traced to the fact that I come from a family that is deeply rooted in the Yoruba culture and tradition. We are masqueraders and I know how to praise people and chant very well. When I started acting, producers loved giving me the role of a traditional chanter because they knew I could chant 'ewi' and 'oriki' very well.

Since you began acting in 1981, has there been any time you felt like quitting?
Never. Such thought has never crossed my mind.

So you never had a challenging moment?
Of course, there were challenging moments but they were not enough reason for me to quit. Things are better now because back then, we did not get any financial gain from our profession. The people that enjoyed being actors were those whose parents were rich enough to sponsor their projects. Back then, if you were unable to produce a movie, it was difficult to become a success in the industry because you would always rely on stage plays to survive. When I produced my first movie, some people were shooting theirs for less than N20,000 but because I knew what I wanted, I aimed higher. I knew what it meant to produce a quality movie and I spent over N70,000 on my project. The Wicked Boy was my first movie and I shot it in 1993 in two parts. It was a big success and it sold very well. I produced a movie that I was paid a royalty of over N2m in the 90s. Now pirates have messed everything up for us.

How much were you paid for the first movie you ever featured in?
During that period, we could not charge. We were satisfied that we featured in movies. We were just doing solidarity jobs for ourselves. Gradually, we started charging and the highest we were paid then was N300. We suffered a lot before the industry became what it is today. There was a time a man called me for a job; he wanted me to chant in his movie. When he saw me, he did not believe I was an actor because of the corporate way I dressed. Then I was still a mechanic with the Lagos State Water Corporation but you would not know. When he asked me to name my price, I said N600 for starters but he could not meet up. He said that the lead character was charging about N400. I declined the job. In 1994, the highest paid actor charged about N1,500. I was paid N1,200 in 1991 for Omo Yoruba, that was the very first movie that I was paid big money.

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