Genevieve Nnaji

About

Genevieve Nnaji (; born 3 May 1979) is a Nigerian actress, producer, and director. She won the Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 2005, making her the first actor to win the award. In 2011, she was honoured as a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic by the Nigerian government for her contributions to Nollywood. Her directorial debut movie, Lionheart, is the first Netflix film from Nigeria and the first Nigerian submission for the Oscars. The movie was disqualified for having most of its dialogue in English. After having spent decades in the movie industry, she was profiled alongside some celebrities and business executives in 2020 in two books by the publisher and editor in chief of Yes International! magazine, Azuh Arinze.

Nnaji was born in Mbaise, Imo State, located in the southeast region of Nigeria and grew up in Lagos, southwest Nigeria. The fourth of eight children, she was raised in a middle-class family; her father worked as an engineer and her mother was a nursery school teacher.

She attended Methodist Girls College (Yaba, Lagos), before proceeding to the University of Lagos, where she graduated with a bachelor…