We Keep Calling Them A-Listers, But By International Standards And Rules, Nollywood Might Only Have One or Two

What Actually Makes Someone an A-Lister, According to the People Who Invented the Term

Before we argue about who deserves the title, let's be honest about what the title actually measures, because most of us have been using it loosely. In Hollywood, "A-list" isn't a vibe or a vote, it's tied to a real, if imperfect, industry tool called the Ulmer Scale, a 100-point system entertainment journalist James Ulmer built specifically to quantify a star's value in getting a film financed and the cameras rolling. A bankable star, by the industry's own definition, is someone "capable of guaranteeing box-office success simply by showing up in a movie", their name alone unlocks financing, distribution, and media attention before a single frame is shot. That's a brutally narrow bar. It's not about how famous you are, how many magazine covers you've graced, or how loved you are on Instagram. It's about whether a studio will hand over a nine-figure budget purely because your face is attached, confident the opening weekend will cover it. By that standard, very few people anywhere in the world actually qualify.

By That Definition, Most of Nollywood's "Biggest Stars" Don't Qualify

Apply that same bar honestly to Nigeria and the math gets uncomfortable fast. Most actors we casually call "A-list" here, and there are dozens, household names with decades of work and genuine public love, have never single-handedly opened a film on their name alone, without an ensemble cast, a holiday release date, or a built-in franchise carrying the weight. Even Call of My Life, a genuine 2026 box office success story, leaned on supporting veterans like Nkem Owoh and Patience Ozokwor around its newer leads rather than betting the whole release on one unproven name. That's not a knock on talent. Plenty of brilliant, technically gifted Nigerian actors have never had the opportunity to test whether their name alone moves tickets, because the industry's financing model has rarely been built to let one actor carry that kind of risk solo. Fame and bankability are different currencies, and Nollywood has historically paid people almost entirely in the first one.

Nollywood Doesn't Even Have a Verified List, And That's the Real Scandal

Here's the part that should actually embarrass the industry more than any individual snub: Nollywood doesn't have reliable, agreed-upon data to settle this argument either way. Open Country Mag's film critics pointed out something telling, that even after years of trying, there are reportedly only two actors in the entire industry who have ever received the kind of in-depth, internationally credible "star profile" treatment that Hollywood trade press routinely gives its A-listers: Rita Dominic and Chidi Mokeme. The same piece recounts a UK distributor asking a Nigerian director for a verified list of the industry's best actors and coming up empty, because no one had built one. If Hollywood's A-list is backed by a scoring system, salary data, and decades of trade journalism tracking who actually opens a film, Nollywood's version of the same conversation is still mostly built on vibes, loyalty, and who trended last awards season. You can't crown A-listers off a system that doesn't measure anything.

There's Only One Name Nigerian Cinema Will Bet a Budget On Without Hesitation

If we're being strict about it, financing power, repeat box office proof, the ability to open a film on name recognition alone, there's really one Nigerian name that clears the bar without an asterisk: Funke Akindele. She's the only filmmaker in Nollywood history to cross N1 billion three separate times, and Behind the Scenes made her the first to cross N2 billion outright, a record she set as writer, director, producer and lead all at once.

Funke Akindele

That's not popularity. That's a studio-grade bankability profile, proof, repeated across multiple films and multiple years, that her name alone de-risks a release enough to greenlight it. Plenty of actors are more critically acclaimed, more internationally recognized, or simply more beloved. Almost none of them have the cold, hard box office receipts to back the word "A-list" the way the term is actually meant to be used.

Toyin Abraham Just Built the Closest Thing to a Second A-Lister Nollywood Has

Toyin Abraham

If Funke Akindele is the one name with zero argument, Toyin Abraham is the closest anyone else has come to building a comparable case. The Alakada franchise alone, built and carried almost entirely on her own comic persona, has repeatedly delivered box office numbers most ensembles can't match, and Oversabi Aunty made her the second indigenous Nigerian filmmaker to cross the N1 billion mark, in her own directorial debut. That's a track record built the same way Akindele's was: repeated proof, on her own name, across more than one project. It's worth noting how rare that pairing is, director-producer-star triple threats who've actually proven it twice. Most of Nollywood's other "biggest names" are extraordinary actors with extraordinary followings who simply haven't been tested, or financed, the same way.

So What Does "A-List" Actually Mean in Nigeria, and Who Gets to Claim It

None of this is an insult to the dozens of genuinely excellent, beloved Nigerian actors working today, it's a question about what word we're using and whether we're using it honestly. If "A-list" in Nigeria simply means "extremely famous, widely loved, instantly recognizable," then the list is long and most of the names we already throw around belong on it. But if we borrow the term properly, the way the industry that coined it actually uses it, tied to financing power and repeated, name-driven box office proof, the honest, current answer is closer to two names than twenty: Funke Akindele, clearly, and Toyin Abraham, arguably. Everyone else currently called "A-list" in Nigerian entertainment conversation is either extremely famous or extremely talented, often both, just not yet proven bankable in the strict sense of the word. Maybe it's time Nollywood built its own version of that scale, instead of borrowing the title without the math behind it.