Originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television by Beti Ellerson. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000. Interview by Beti Ellerson at FESPACO 1997, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, February 1997; combined with a short written correspondence, December 1998. Alexandra Duah passed away in 2000.
Alexandra, could you talk about your acting background and how you came to cinema in general?
I initially trained in cinematography and qualified as a film editor. People say that I am not very easy to live with because any time I go out of a place and return I am able to detect that a chair has been moved; that a flower has been touched. My children know how I am and they have begun calling me "Radio Ghana" because I query every thing that I see. I got my actor training from an old actress named Jean P. Martin in London.
I have, over the years, taken acting seriously. Every little word, every little statement, I make sure that I conduct enough research to be able to know the bearing my statement has on the entire script or story and my relationship to the other actors. I think about costuming and everything. When I am on location, I am not just an actress, I am more like a mother who tries to solve problems between artists and producer, but then, having done all these things, I am satisfied with having my name only as actress in the credits.
However, since I acted in Sankofa, where I played the role of Nunu, no producer has offered me any script, no one has hired me. I now consider myself Ghana's international actress who has found herself redundant. As an actress, I think that I have been let down miserably. I have now decided to try to go back into what I learned in film school.
