Veteran actress Taiwo Ajai-Lycett has said that actors who do not take on kissing roles are not proper actors.
The 82-year-old said this in an interview with TVC published on Saturday while explaining what acting really entails.
She said: “Acting is believing, we are projecting life. There is a difference between play-acting and actually wanting to show how other people feel and that’s what I do, I like to see how other people feel because if you do that, the tendency is that you are more tolerant of what is going on, you put yourself in other people’s shoes.
“It also means that you’re going around knowing that this could happen to me and you want to be authentic about what you project of that person, you don’t judge.
“I read for instance in Nigerian papers where people who marry an actor who has been kissed and somebody goes like ‘All my years in acting I’ve never been kissed, I don’t allow anybody to kiss me,’ Well, you are not an actor, you don’t bring your personal preferences into play. You can do that when you’re playing acting but when you are acting, you are that person.
Explaining further, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett added: “If I am required to be passionate about somebody, if I am in love with somebody It is a fact that we don’t really have to go for it but we have to convince the people that this is what lovers do so you can’t pretend because that is not acting, you live it, acting is believing.
VIDEO: Kemi Adetiba is a well-bred woman – Taiwo Ajai-Lycett
“I mean, you can do your acting and you leave it, it’s a job of work for god sake. You leave it when you finish it and go back to your normal life, you don’t have what we have here, so you take your character with you. A proper actor would not want to be known with one character, you want to show you can tackle all manner of characters and situations.”
