Part of the creative journey for me was not to come up the conventional route. I didn't go through drama school. I chose not to. I came from a very working-class area, a child of Nigerian immigrants.

DeObia Oparei

Categorized in : Me Child School Journey

It's all about the sensuality of movement, every movement you make. That's why I love doing action movies. It's all about movement, dance - even if you're hitting someone in the face. You've got to sell it all with great passion. There's a narrative to the body. It's exactly the same as dance.

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I got into this thing called the National Youth Theatre, and to me, that was all about the status quo. It seemed to me like 'Downton Abbey' - all the working-class and black people were playing servants, or the gravedigger in 'Hamlet,' and the boys from Eton and posh private schools got Hamlet, all the big roles.

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I did everything, I used to be a drag queen, I used to be a stripper.

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I always wanted to experience what performance would be like without the fourth wall, so I formed a company in Australia, and we did avant-garde theater, playing with gender norms, conversations about race - we just had a box of issues that we wanted to subvert with our stories, with dance.

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In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

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I came from a very poor background. I came from children's homes; I came from a violent family, and against all the odds, I succeeded.

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