ENTERTAINMENT: Getting to know the Nigerian Hollywood actor - Tomiwa Edun

Look at the picture very well, I guess the face looks very familiar. Probably you never had imagined that the face before you is a Nigerian right?

To confirm your doubt, meet Adetomiwa Edun, a British, Nigerian actor best known for his role as Sir Elyan in the television show Merlin.

Born: 1984, Lagos, Nigeria

Movies: Dying of the Light, Romeo And Juliet

Education: Eton College, Royal Academy of Dramatic ArtArt

Read his response to an interview he granted to some Journalists. 

(About his father's reaction when he decided to be an actor)

He didn't understand. But I went to RADA and it was great when he came to see one of my first plays. I could hear raucous chuckles, and I thought: he gets it now.
Adetomiwa: I think my dad just felt I ought to have gone down a safer or more secure route. When I said that I wanted to be an actor, and maybe go to drama school, I think he was a bit frightened. But eventually I convinced him about my passion and he became really supportive.

One of my earliest memories is of reading a book in my house that was about gods, heroes, greatness, conquest and monsters and being riveted by it. I remember going back and seeing that this was The Odyssey. If I tell a story half as good as that I'd be happy.

I did an internship at Citigroup. At the end of it, one of the guys said: Your heart doesn't seem in this. And I felt like I'd failed to act well... I'd been busted.

Ultimately people connect with acting if it's honest. Theatre is drama at its most essential: you can see me and I can see you and it depends on a mutual contract. The thing I'm trying to explore [in TV] is how you achieve that when the audience isn'timpacts.

(About performing at the Globe theatre)

I'll be nervous for half an hour before every show. It still feels a bit unreal, I come out and you see this sea of people, more than I've ever performed in front of. The size of the place is so daunting, so tangible and immense. Sure, I realize there's a lot to play for, but somehow I'm convinced I can handle it.

Classics shaped me. It's the study of peoples, of civilizations, and you get a very strong sense of the role that drama plays in shaping their identity. Classics students are essentially cultural archaeologists, and that's a good thing for actors to be, too.
Adetomiwa: With Shakespeare you can't even try to think about the weight of performance history, because you'll just be swamped. The plays were written to be performed here, so the best thing you can do is to get the story of the play across, to really show you know and feel it. You've got to do your research, because the subtleties matter as much as the big impacts

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(About drama school)

Some people don't realize that drama school is so exhausting physically, mentally, intellectually, emotionally. I quite enjoyed the fact that I wasn't going down a conventional route, like some of my friends, but there was a lot of pressure and there are times when you think to yourself: I could be living on a beach in Barcelona, or working behind a bar... why am I doing this?

(About race when it comes to acting)

Of course there are people who think your blackness is the most interesting thing about you, but I don't. My feeling on the relevance of blackness to actors is that the hard work was done decades ago, and we shouldn't be obsessed by it. I'm not saying race is irrelevant but this is a cosmopolitan age and these things matter less than they used to.

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