Olu Jacobs Biography: Life, career & death of a Nollywood icon

Olu Jacobs, one of the true godfathers of Nollywood, has died at the age of 84. Born Oludotun Baiyewu Jacobs on July 11, 1942, and passing on September 16, 2026, his death marks the end of a career that spanned more than five decades and helped shape African cinema as the world knows it today.

He was placed alongside Pete Edochie as one of the two men most responsible for building Nollywood's foundations, and it is hard to argue otherwise.

Jacobs' story does not begin in the film studios of Lagos but far from them. Born to parents from Egba Alake, he actually spent much of his early childhood in Kano, in Nigeria's north, where he attended Holy Trinity School.

Even then, the signs were there; he threw himself into the school's debating and drama societies, sharpening the presence and command of language that would later define his acting.

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The real turning point came when he attended one of Chief Hubert Ogunde's annual concert parties at the Colonial Hotel in Kano.

Watching Ogunde, widely regarded as the father of Nigerian theatre, perform live lit something in the young Jacobs. Not long after, he secured a visa and travelled to England to chase that spark properly.

In England, Jacobs enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, one of the most respected drama schools in the world.

His stage career began in earnest in 1972, when he took on the role of The Boy in "A Taste of Honey" at the newly opened Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

From there, British television opened up to him. Through the 1970s, Jacobs became a familiar face on shows including The Goodies, Till Death Us Do Part, Barlow at Large, The Venturers, Angels, 1990, The Tomorrow People, and The Professionals.

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In 1978, he took on the role of President Mageeba in Michael Codron's West End staging of Tom Stoppard's play Night and Day, a serious mark of credibility for any actor, let alone one who had arrived in Britain as an outsider chasing a dream sparked in a Kano hotel hall.

The 1980s pushed him further into international film. He appeared in John Irvin's war drama. The Dogs of War, Roman Polanski's adventure-comedy Pirates in 1986, and the family adventure film Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend in 1985.

On British television, he featured in TVS's The Witches and the Grinnygog. By any measure, Jacobs had built a serious international career before most Nigerians back home even knew his name.

Jacobs returned to Nigeria in 1990 and stepped straight into the lead role of the NTA detective series The Third Eye. It was the beginning of a homecoming that would define the rest of his life.

Over the following decades, he starred in more than 120 Nollywood films, becoming one of the most recognizable and respected actors the industry has ever produced.

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He also lent his image to television commercials for brands like Ribena and Binatone, a sign of just how far his fame had travelled beyond the screen.

Jacobs married fellow actor Joke Silva in 1989, and the two became one of Nollywood's most enduring couples.

Silva famously kept her stage name even after marriage, and Jacobs defended that choice publicly, once explaining that she was her own individual long before she became his wife and that marrying him should not have cost her the identity her audience already knew. The couple had two children together.

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Beyond acting, Jacobs and Silva built something that would outlast them both: the Lufodo Group, a media company spanning film production and distribution, alongside the Lufodo Academy of Performing Arts, which trains young Nigerians in theater and film craft. It is a fitting legacy for a man whose own career began the moment he watched Hubert Ogunde perform on a stage in Kano.

Jacobs' body of work earned him some of Nigeria's highest honors. In 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan conferred on him the national title of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic.

He won the Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2007, followed by the Industry Merit Award at the 2013 Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards, and the AMAA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

In August 2022, the Audio-Visual Rights Society of Nigeria presented both Jacobs and Silva with icon awards and membership certificates in recognition of their decades of service to the industry.

Olu Jacobs died on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at the age of 84. His son, Olusoji Jacobs, confirmed the news in the early hours of that morning, closing the final chapter on a life that took a boy from Kano to London's West End and back home again to become one of the true architects of Nollywood.