Kunle Afolayan (born 30 September 1974) is a Nigerian actor, film producer and director.
Early life and career
Kunle Afolayan is of Igbomina-Yoruba descent, from Kwara State. He is the son of the famous theater and film director and producer Ade Love. He majored in economics and started out working in a bank while doing some casual acting, before deciding to move into full-time filmmaking and taking a course at the New York Film Academy. Since 2005 he has been active in the Nigerian film industry. He has made several extremely popular titles including: The Figurine: Araromire which was in the Yoruba and English languages and Phone Swap which featured Wale Ojo, Joke Silva, Nse Ikpe Etim and the legendary Chika Okpala. The Figurine won five major awards in the African Film Academy and experienced tremendous success in the Nigerian movie theaters.
Kunle Afolayan appeared at the Subversive Film Festival in 2011 where he represented Nigerian film industry, said, in 2009, to be the world’s second largest, with his colleague Zeb Ejiro. In May 2013, Phone Swap premiered in France at the first edition of NollywoodWeek Paris and won the Public Choice Award. Afolayan’s father Adeyemi Josiah Afolayan (Ade-Love) was a Nigerian artist of the second half of the 20th century who worked in traveling theater, then turned to the film-making industry.
Personal life
Kunle is married to Tolu and they have three children. He identifies as a Free-thinker.
Controversy
On 6 April 2015, Afolayan posted a tweet which implied that Igbos were the majority group behind copyright infringement in Nigeria. The backlash from fans led to an apology from Afolayan and an explanation that he was concerned about the piracy of his films, and most especially threats on the potential release of unlicensed copies of October 1, his latest film at the time. Shortly after his outburst, pirated copies of October 1 hit the market on 13 April 2015.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
He has done well for himself