Before she won, Funke Akindele was a young woman from Ikorodu in Lagos State who spent her days moving from one audition to the next and hearing no far more often than yes.
She attended Grace Children’s School in Gbagada, earned an Ordinary National Diploma in Mass Communication at what was then Ogun State Polytechnic, now Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, and later completed a law degree at the University of Lagos, a path that shows how seriously she took her education even as her ambitions pulled her toward the screen.
By her own account, she began acting in 1996 in what Nigerians call waka pass roles, the kind of appearances where an actor barely speaks, and she went from audition to audition collecting rejections. She has described herself in those days as the queen of auditions, someone who read so well that people applauded and yet walked away with little more than church extra parts. She has also admitted that she cried on some of those occasions. Her mother kept her going by reminding her that the passion and the talent were real and by giving her money for transport, though there were days when Funke trekked part of the way before boarding a bus to make it to an audition.
The first turning point came around 1999, when she was cast as Bisi in the sitcom I Need to Know, a role that earned her the first one million naira of her career at the age of 22. She recalled showing the money to her mother, who told her to pay her tithe before anything else, after which she went to Yaba market to buy the decent clothes and shoes she had never been able to afford. She summed up that moment by saying, “The girl who once had nothing finally had something.”
The relief did not last, however, and she has spoken candidly about the period that followed, when the roles dried up and she returned to auditions, calling people and knocking on doors that would not open, convinced that she had lost her chance. One of the lowest points came when she travelled to Oshogbo for a film after being promised a supporting role, packed all her clothes, and waited five days in a hotel room while a generator problem delayed filming, only to be called at last to play a secretary in two scenes. She was devastated and cried, but an actor advised her to accept the part, so she collected her small payment and returned to Lagos.
Her chance eventually arrived in 2008 with Jenifa, a comedy about a young woman from the village of Ayetoro who gains admission to university and struggles to keep up with campus life. Akindele created and played the title character, and the film earned her the Best Actress in a Leading Role award at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009. Even after that breakthrough the work did not get any easier, and speaking at an International Women’s Day event organised by Wema Bank in March 2026, she recalled locking herself away in Amen Estate in Lagos for almost two years while building the Jenifa brand, writing, producing, directing, acting and supervising every department, to the point that some colleagues who were irritated by her absence from parties even called her a sadist.
The sacrifice has paid off on a scale that few people in Nollywood have matched. The Return of Jenifa became one of the fastest-grossing Nollywood films of its time after its release in 2011, Jenifa’s Diary earned her Best Actress in a Comedy at the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards in 2016 and 2017, and she now holds the record for the most AMVCA wins by an actress. Her 2024 film Everybody Loves Jenifa crossed ₦1 billion within 19 days of release and went on to gross more than ₦1.4 billion, and in December 2024 she was also named UNAIDS National Goodwill Ambassador for Nigeria. Her latest film, Behind the Scenes, opened on December 12, 2025, became the fastest film in West Africa to cross ₦1 billion and the first Nollywood film to pass ₦2 billion, and has since been reported at about ₦2.7 billion, making it the highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time. It reached Netflix on April 3, 2026, where it was reported to have hit number one shortly after its debut, and her next film, The Four, is set for a global cinema release on December 11, 2026.
For a woman who once counted her shoes and cried over two scenes as a secretary, the story now reads like a long answer to every rejection she collected, one she has put in her own words by writing, “Every No prepared me for the Yes that mattered.”
