Nollywood actress-turned-sailor, Grace-Charis Effah (previously known as Belinda Effah), has shared why she quit the Nigerian movie industry for a new career as a Navy officer.
She recently revealed that she stopped acting because she didn’t feel like she was adding much value to Nollywood anymore.
Speaking during an interview with Saturday Beats, Effah said that attending a Nigerian Navy School in Port Harcourt and watching her late father become a Navy commander made her interested in life as a sailor.
Admitting that she has always been a fan of the navy life, the movie star disclosed that while it was a challenge to embrace it as a new career at 40, she did everything to make it happen just to honour her dad.
“I come from a Navy family. I went to Nigerian Navy School in Port Harcourt (Rivers State), and my dad retired as a Navy commander. So, this life resonated with me. Joining the Navy felt like a way to honour my father.
It was a bit of a challenge because I had just turned 40. But here I am, living the dream of being a sailor. Life over here (in the US) is a different ball game entirely, and the opportunity really challenged me,” she said.
Effah further said that her movies becoming less impactful to society made it hard for her to make more, because she is someone who is driven by the impact she makes with her work.
The sailor revealed that she knew it was time to do something different when her Nollywood jobs began to feel like an exhausting routine she was tired of waking up to.
According to her, even though she initially joined the Nigerian movie industry out of passion, it gradually became all about the money, and that shift eventually made it obvious that it was time to let the dream go.
“Before joining the Navy, I had become passive in acting. I felt stuck and wasn’t adding much value to the movie industry anymore. It all started feeling too routine; just another job for the pay. I wasn’t feeling the impact my movies were supposed to make, and I am driven by the impact I make. I didn’t want to be just another actress putting out films no one watched.
I started losing myself in the characters I was playing. I didn’t know who I was anymore. Without acting, I had no identity. I had to go back to the basics and rediscover who I really am. It took me a while. Some people just noticed I was off the scene, but the truth is, I was away for over a year,” she added.
