Deyemi Okanlawon quit acting in 2019 over poor pay. Discover why he left, what he did next, and who convinced him to return to Nollywood.
At the height of his rising fame, Deyemi Okanlawon quietly stepped away from acting, not because of scandal or burnout, but because the work and the pay no longer made sense to him. His choice to return later came after rethinking purpose, value, and what a sustainable creative life should look like.
Speaking on the CreativiTea podcast, Okanlawon didn’t hold back about why he left. The money wasn’t right, and neither was the work. He’d given up a stable corporate job to chase acting, and by 2019, that gamble no longer felt worth it.
He described dreading his own job, questioning what good passion is if it leaves you unfulfilled. So he did something few people in his position would dare, he quit at the height of uncertainty, with no guarantee acting would ever call him back.
Okanlawon didn’t sit around waiting. He returned to the corporate world, joining Silverbird Film Distribution as head of marketing. His rise there was quick, he later led the company’s Nollywood distribution desk, and when the pandemic pulled the substantive CEO away, Okanlawon stepped in as acting CEO.
He’d swapped movie sets for boardrooms, seemingly for good.
Then something shifted. The same industry that once undervalued him started calling, literally. Mo Abudu called. Kemi Adetiba called. Jade Osiberu, Funke Akindele, Kunle Afolayan, all reached out, one after another, asking him to return.
He said no. Repeatedly. For two years, he held his ground, even as some of Nollywood’s biggest names kept pushing.
By 2021, Okanlawon finally relented. His return role in Funke Akindele’s Omo Ghetto: The Saga became the turning point, the film that didn’t just bring him back, but relaunched his career on a bigger scale than before.
It’s a full-circle story: an actor who once auditioned in 2010 with no promises, built a career on instinct, walked away when it stopped feeling worth it, and came back only when the industry proved it valued him.
