--- title: 'Sharon Ooja Says Bipolar Role Was Her Toughest Test Yet' type: 'blog post' section: 'Away From Set' format: 'Editorial feature' standfirst: '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.' author: 'Marcus Reid' published: '2026-09-14' updated: '2026-09-14' about_people: - 'Sharon Ooja' tags: - 'Sharon Ooja bipolar character role' - 'Sharon Ooja Arise TV interview' - 'Nollywood actress mental health role' - 'movie roles about bipolar disorder' - 'Sharon Ooja toughest acting role' sources: - 'https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2026/09/13/sharon-ooja-opens-up-about-her-most-exhausting-movie-role-yet/' - 'https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/movie/373690/sharon-ooja-opens-up-on-mental-toll-of-playing-bipolar-chara.html' - 'https://www.msn.com/en-xl/africa/nigeria/sharon-ooja-opens-up-on-the-movie-role-that-pushed-her-emotional-limits/ar-AA2c6LqY' canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/blog/sharon-ooja-says-bipolar-role-was-her-toughest-test-yet' publisher: 'CinePixo' --- # 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.* By Marcus Reid, 2026-09-14 · Away From Set 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. ![Sharon Ooja talking Nov 2017](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/5caf0c08-7445-4bc7-a0b5-d9bdb61393bf.webp) *Photo: NdaniTV · [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64639732)* ## 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. She did not claim that acting the role gave her direct knowledge of living with bipolar disorder. Instead, she said the experience gave her deeper empathy for people who deal with mental-health issues in their lives. She also said the work was exhausting. Those two points belong together. The role did not make her an authority on the condition; it made her more aware of the effort involved in portraying a person whose experience she does not share. That distinction matters. Screen stories about mental health can easily turn a diagnosis into a shortcut for wild behavior or dramatic mood swings. Ooja’s comments, as reported by PM News Nigeria, focus less on spectacle than on the discipline required to make the character feel human. ![Sharon Ooja](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/301df12a-cbce-4257-b12f-62ab2fd3a4c2.webp) *Photo: NdaniTV · [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sharon_Ooja_on_Ndanitv.png)* ![Sharon Ooja talking Nov 2017](https://pokemon-dive.us-lax-4.linodeobjects.com/cinepixo/posts/2026/09/19aa6bf4-56c3-4ff4-8a54-4862e43fd7e1.webp) *Photo: NdaniTV · [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) · [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sharon_Ooja_talking_Nov_2017.png)* ## The burden placed on an actor carrying a diagnosis on screen A role like this asks the actor to carry two responsibilities at once. Ooja must deliver the emotional shifts the script requires, while also avoiding a performance that reduces bipolar disorder to a string of loud reactions. Her comments suggest that the director was tracking not only whether she cried or laughed, but whether those changes stayed true to the character’s internal tempo. That is a demanding request for any actor. It can be especially delicate when the story centers on a mental-health condition that many viewers know through personal experience, family or friends. The person on screen has to remain a character, not a lesson, while the performance still needs care. Ooja’s account does not tell us how the finished movie handles the diagnosis, and the reports do not provide details about the film’s title, release date or wider production. What they do provide is her description of the work: mentally tiring, emotionally crowded and dependent on close direction. ## Sharon Ooja’s empathy came from the exhaustion The most revealing part of Ooja’s comments is not that the role was difficult. Actors say that often. It is that the difficulty changed how she thought about people living with mental-health conditions. She found the performance exhausting even with a director calling her back when she drifted from the character’s tempo. People living with those conditions do not get to step out when the scene ends. That does not settle every question about the film’s representation. It does explain why Ooja remembers the part so vividly. She had to cry, rage, laugh and switch again, sometimes before an audience could catch its breath. The work left her with empathy—and with a clear sense that the hardest pressure was happening inside her head. ## How this piece was made **Format:** Editorial feature ## In this piece - [Sharon Ooja](https://cinepixo.com/people/sharon-ooja) ## Sources - https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2026/09/13/sharon-ooja-opens-up-about-her-most-exhausting-movie-role-yet/ - https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/movie/373690/sharon-ooja-opens-up-on-mental-toll-of-playing-bipolar-chara.html - https://www.msn.com/en-xl/africa/nigeria/sharon-ooja-opens-up-on-the-movie-role-that-pushed-her-emotional-limits/ar-AA2c6LqY Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours. Source: https://cinepixo.com/blog/sharon-ooja-says-bipolar-role-was-her-toughest-test-yet Written for CinePixo. Nothing on this page is imported prose.