- Sharon Ooja, a Nollywood actress, discussed the emotional and mental challenges of playing characters with bipolar disorder.
- She shared her experiences during an interview with Arise TV.
- Ooja highlighted the demands of taking on such emotionally intense roles in films.
Nollywood actress Sharon Ooja has opened up about the emotional and mental demands she faces when portraying characters living with bipolar disorder in films.
The 35-year-old actress made this known during a recent interview with Arise TV, where she discussed the challenges that come with taking on emotionally demanding roles.
According to Ooja, portraying a character with bipolar disorder can be mentally exhausting because it requires her to transition rapidly between different emotional states while remaining fully immersed in the role.
She explained that the experience has also given her a deeper understanding and empathy for people living with mental health conditions.
Ooja noted that maintaining a character who constantly shifts between emotions such as sadness, anger and happiness is particularly challenging during filming.
The actress recalled instances where her director had to correct her after she unintentionally slipped back into her normal emotional state instead of maintaining the character she was portraying.
She said: “I think that because it was more mentally draining for me; when you’re a normal person playing a bipolar role, it’s a lot of work. This gave me so much empathy for people actually dealing with mental health issues because it was draining. My director would sometimes have to call me because he’s like, you’re not staying on tempo, you’re going back to normal, you can’t be normal. So, it was so draining having to be crying, laughing, angry so many emotions in one.”
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