Sharon Ooja Says Bipolar Role Was Her Toughest Test Yet
The Nollywood actor describes the mental strain of switching between tears, anger and laughter while playing a character with bipolar disorder. Her account offers a rare look at the work—and the cost—behind a demanding performance.
Sharon Ooja has described playing a character with bipolar disorder as one of the hardest roles of her career. In an Arise TV interview reported on Sept. 13 by PM News Nigeria, The Nigerian Voice and MSN, the Nollywood actor said the part left her more mentally exhausted than physically challenged. For film readers, her account matters because it puts a face on the labor behind a performance that asks an actor to change emotional direction again and again, sometimes in the same scene.
Ooja said the difficulty came from playing the character as a person who was otherwise “normal,” while still keeping the disorder present in the performance. “When you're a normal person playing a bipolar role, it's a lot of work,” she said, as quoted by The Nigerian Voice. The line is simple, but it points to the actor’s central problem: she had to build a believable person rather than a collection of symptoms.
Sharon Ooja’s Arise TV account of the role
Ooja said the role demanded constant movement between crying, anger and laughter, along with other emotional states. She called the process draining and said it required her to keep a certain tempo rather than settle into an ordinary emotional rhythm.
Her director sometimes had to correct her on set, she explained. If she slipped back into what she called a normal state, the director would tell her she was losing the tempo of the character. That detail gives the story a physical shape. An actor can leave a scene, take a breath and reset. Ooja was describing a job in which the reset itself could be the mistake.
The director’s intervention also shows how much of this work happens in the room, between takes, with another person watching closely. Ooja was not describing a solitary act of inspiration. She was describing a performance built through correction, repetition and the pressure to hold an unusual emotional pattern until the camera stopped.
Photo: NdaniTV · CC BY 3.0 · source
Why the performance pushed her past physical strain
Ooja said the role was one of her toughest, especially mentally. In her view, that kind of difficulty can be almost worse than a physical challenge. Physical strain is easier to recognize: a long day, a demanding movement, a body that hurts. Mental strain can follow an actor away from the set, even when the costume is back on its hanger.
