The Rise and Fall of Tonto Dikeh
Tonto dikeh's rise in Nollywood was meteoric but her fall was disgraceful. At the time, Tonto Dikeh was one of the most sought-after actresses in Nollywood, But she became one of the well-known celebrities who is no stranger to controversy.
Tonto Dikeh a River State-born actress started her journey to stardom by participating in a reality TV show called "The next movie star", This reality show is aimed at discovering prospects for the movie industry. She ended as the first runner-up, and from there she propelled into one of the top actresses in the movie industry.
She has been featured in many movies but the movie that propelled Tonto Dikeh into stardom was Holy Cross, in which she featured alongside A-list Nollywood actors such as Jim Iyke, Pete Edochie, and Nonso Diobi. This marked the beginning of her success story.
Due to her exemplary performance in the movie, she received many subsequent proposals to feature in more movies, other movies in which the actress has since featured to date include pounds and dollars (2006), 7 grave (2007), Total love(2008), Native son(2009), Dirty secret (2010) among many others.
The actress has received criticism in many movies she starred in, one of the most notable ones was in 2010, Tonto Dikeh became the subject of public criticism following her role in the movie titled "Dirty secret", which contained many nude scenes.
This made her a hot cake for producers who at that time wanted her to be part of their movies due to her logic in script interpretation. Apart from her good performances as an actress, she also has the face, physique, charisma, and other attributes needed by a star to stay in the limelight for as long as possible.
Along the line, Tonto Dikeh turns into an actress who's always at the center of controversy, at first it was thought by many as a strategy to be hyped by the media, but as easily as controversies could hype a celebrity at the same time it could kill the celebrity image.
After her breakthrough in the movie industry, reports were coming in from different directors that worked with her on set complaining bitterly about how difficult it is to work with her on set. On one occasion, one director even described her “ as a rot and lacks every bit of home training”
It was also claimed that she was addicted to marijuana, apart from that she did not seem to have the best of relationships with most of her colleagues, The most notable one was with Mercy Johnson ( who was a rising star at that time and also considered as her arch-rival). She made some offensive comments towards Mercy Johnson ( though she later apologized in 2017) and she had a bad relationship with whoever rebuked her at that time. Her love life is no stranger to controversy, she has been linked romantically with a lot of superstars including Iyanya, Wizkid, and 2face.
In 2014, she got married to Churchill Olakunle they had a son, however, her marriage was plagued with " several frivolous claims of falsity ranging from domestic violence to false allegations". They broke up in 2016, the angered actress reportedly destroyed a lot of properties before packing her belongings.
She got involved in a lot of controversies which also include her much-publicized beauty surgery, her feud with her bestie turned enemy cross-dresser Bobrisky, and recently her three-way relationship saga with prince Kpopkogiri and dancer Janemena.
It was claimed that she is nicknamed "Mother controversy" by her colleagues in the movie industry. Most producers would not feature her in movies any longer due to the drama that always surrounds her, it was bad to the extent that she feature in not more than three movies from 2015 to 2022.
Finally, she announced her retirement from Nollywood in August 2022, she was quoted saying " I don't like movies like that again and it's been a long time since I acted on screen, you know. I've acted in about two films in ten years.
By Steph Luhi.