Money, women and power are three inseparables that form a carnal trinity all over the world. Men of money and power usually end up attracting a flock of the most beautiful women.
The glamourous and stunning beauty, Lilian Bach, a model and Nollywood diva, lives an opulent lifestyle that attract stories linking her romantically with the wealthy and powerful politician, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
City wags state that her successes were down to favours from her alleged powerful lover.
If the story of an affair with the ACN leader is true, it will merely fit into a global pattern of famous female entertainers who have been romantically linked with the high and mighty in the society where they reside. In his tempestuous life time, the late US President, JF Kennedy, was rumoured to have dated a sizeable number of Hollywood beauties, including troubled star, Marilyn Monroe.
Even the late African queen of music, Mariam Makeba flirted and eventually married a former President of Guinea, in one of her turbulent affairs while alive. Several of such real and sometimes rumoured dalliances are constantly reported by the media around the globe with screaming headlines.
But one of Nollywood’s divas, Lilian Bach did not find the story funny.
Ensconced in her tastefully furnished home in the nouveau-riche area of Lekki, Lagos, with choice automobiles, a new multi million production outfit among other goodies, Bach angrily dismissed the allegation of a wild affair with Tinubu as total fabrication.
She wonders why people believe a hardworking lady of her status cannot hit success on her own without depending on a powerful lover.
“Oh my goodness! Are you kidding me? Where the hell did you hear that from? They are crazy. I don’t even know him (Tinubu). We’ve not even met and we are not having anything together,” she fumes.
Still seemingly jolted by the allegation, the former face of Delta Soap, who began her acting career in 1997, insisted the rumour remains false and ridiculous.
“What those spreading this false rumour failed to see is that some of us are doing other businesses apart from acting. We have other things that we do. I do interior decorations, I do corporate gifts, I do some supplies and other small contracts here and there. I have property, to the glory of God. So these are avenues that money is coming in for me,” she asserted.
The actress-turned-producer who recently breezed in from India with her latest movie, Naseeb, decided to share her true life story with your roaring Entertainment Express. Below is the true life story of Lilian Bola Bach, who was raised by her Nigerian mum upon the untimely death of her Polish dad.
My Polish dad died of Stroke
I lost my darling father a long time ago. He died of stroke. He was 60 years when he died. I was very close to my father. He was a Polish. He was working here in Nigeria when he met my mother. They married legally, so I’m not an unfortunate half-caste. I knew my father very well. My mother is from Isale-Eko here in Lagos State. I was also born at Island Maternity, Isale Eko, which makes me an original Omo Eko babe.
Between my mum and dad, we are four and I am the first and the only girl. My dad had a previous marriage that ended before he married my mother. But after I lost my father, my mum still got married and had two more children.
My biggest fond memory of my father is that he was a strict disciplinarian. They say that white people don’t smack their children but my father used to smack us a lot. He had this heavy slippers that if you didn’t listen he would just pick it up and smack you with it. He was a disciplinarian and we used to fear him a lot when he was alive. But he was a very loving father. He never hesitated to correct us whenever we went wrong and still drew us closer to himself afterward. He was very loving and very encouraging. He played his part very well when he was alive. I missed him a lot.
Oh my God, I miss a lot of things about him, but I can’t just say this is what I missed most about him. He used to take us out a lot. His company then was fun. I mean we could tell him anything. He was a mechanical engineer. He could operate any machine you can think of. He died in Rotterdam, Holland and was buried there, because his first wife was a Dutch. I visit Poland always to see my relatives. My younger brother got married to a Polish woman. I go to Poland every year. It’s just that I’ve not been there this year. But I will go soon. My Yoruba name is Bola.
Again, I thank God that I’m one of those people blessed with a wonderful mother. My mother is a very free person as long as you are doing a legal thing; go ahead and follow your heart. That’s my mother for you. She’s not one of those mothers that would insist you have to be a doctor or a lawyer. Her love aided my growth in the entertainment industry.
Secret of my beauty
First of all, just like we say in the movie industry when we are rolling the end credit, to God be the glory, I thank God that I am a beautiful woman. Everything good needs maintenance otherwise, that’s the end. If you don’t maintain your skin and everything around you they get spoilt easily. We have harsh weather here. For somebody like me with my natural fair skin, I have to maintain it. I do a lot of exfoliation, I do that daily. I moisturize my skin twice daily, against the sun and harsh weather. And I drink water, water is very good. And I sleep a lot anytime I have to sleep otherwise; you know the bag under the eyes will surface. Exfoliation helps removes dead cells.
For instance, we have exfoliating sponges that you use to wash your body. Some people don’t like sponge on their body, they prefer exfoliating soaps. Those soaps feel as if they have sands inside. The sandy part is what scratches your skin; it takes off the dead cells because if those dead cells don’t come off, you will not have a glowing skin. Once you’ve taken out the dead cells, then you have to maintain the skin by applying a lot of moisturizing cream or lotion depending on the type you like using, that is what I do.
My face particularly has the tendency of bringing out spots, so what I do is that I take off makeup before going to bed. I really don’t like makeup. I wear makeup because of camera. When I’m home I don’t use makeup. When I’m going out I make up very mildly and once I get home, I quickly take it off so that I can give my skin room to breathe. For me, relaxation is just the best way to make your skin healthy and eating the right food as well. So it’s good for you to identify what works for you.
When it comes to keeping fit I’m one of those lazy people and that’s due to the fact that I work so hard and by the time I’m waking up, it will be time for me to start another work. But there are times I face it so religiously and there are times I get tired. We are in the entertainment world and people are looking up to us for a lot of things. We are supposed to be role models. It’s not easy but I’m trying to make that part of my everyday life too.
Coping with men
For me the secret of coping with men is just to remain courteous. You do that by saying just a polite no to their advances and offers. Funnily, some of these men come as fans and will not allow you to rest. How they get one’s phone number is amazing. Some are just fans, they want to appreciate your works and some live in fantasyland. Saying “oh my God, I want to date that superstar,” in that case, you put them where they belong , but like I said earlier, a gentle polite no will do. The stubborn ones I handle with some level of harshness.
Sexiest part of my body
Oh, I see where you’re going, but I tell you something, it’s my heart. The heart I’ve got is for the good of mankind. I got a wonderful heart and I appreciate it so also with people around me. If a woman is beautiful physically and what comes out of her heart is not good, you’re ugly to me; because I look at inner beauty more than the outside. So talking about outer beauty, my own man loves everything about me; my legs, hips, boobs and everything. I’m wonderfully made. God has made me so well that I appreciate every organ of my body physically and even the ones internally that I can’t even see. Every part of me trips my man. He tells me often, “You are just a complete package.”
My affair with Johnson Davidson
I am often asked about my affair with Johnson Davidson, whether we are still having affairs or not. I’ve cleared the air on this issue between Johnson Davidson and I severally. But the questions just won’t go. So, I thank God for another opportunity to clear the air on it.
I’m not a typical Nigerian woman, I have a polish blood running in my veins and that makes me an Oyinbo woman and I thank God for that. I don’t reason the way most people reason here. Johnson Davidson and I, yes, we dated, went out but we have packed up the relationship years ago. We now do business together. Johnson is like a brother to me now. We work together. When people see us together walking or doing a business presentation together, they say these two people are still on. I have my relationship. I’m not going to mention the man’s name but it’s not Johnson Davidson. Johnson too has his own person. Even my man and Johnson are friends. So people should just please leave me alone about Johnson Davidson’s topic and other men they are linking me with.
Alleged affair with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu
Oh my goodness! Are you kidding me? Where the hell did you hear that from? They are crazy. I don’t even know him (Tinubu). We’ve not even met and we are not having anything together.
I don’t know where the rumour is coming from. I guess it’s when you’re doing so well and because people know how much we earn in this industry they would just do their calculations and begin to think otherwise, by saying it can’t be money from this industry that is sustaining you. But what they fail to see is that some of us are doing other businesses apart from acting. We have other things that we do. I do interior decorations, I do corporate gifts, I do some supplies and other small contracts here and there. I have property, to the glory of God. So these are avenues that money is coming in from. I don’t have to wait for one politician. That’s ridiculous. It’s false news. It’s totally false.
Abusive/violent relationships
I was shocked by the story of the guy who killed his wife. Any woman will tell you the same thing. I can’t stand a wife beater. What is the meaning of going into a relationship when you know the man is violent or has violent tendencies? Honestly, it’s totally wrong. It’s not good for a man to show that he’s a man by beating up his wife. If he wants to show that he is a man, he should go and do business and try and be successful. Or he should go and become a boxer if you have got so much muscle in you, instead of beating up the opposite sex. I can’t stand a wife beater. Thank God, I’ve never been a victim.
Heartbreaks
I have never put my heart in a position to be broken by anybody. Never in my life have I been heart broken. It’s not as if I’ve never loved but I see signs early enough for me to say please, find your level. It’s when you see signs and ignore them and continue saying it is well is when your heart can be broken. Yes, I believe in love. God is love and I know true love still exists. I’m also in love, but won’t comment on my love life on the pages of newspapers. Please, it’s very personal and a no-go area, thank you.
Will I ever get married?
You said Lillian Bach is beautiful, I agree with you. But how many beautiful women in their marriages are actually happy? Just because people are doing something doesn’t mean I should do the same. I will get married when I feel like getting married. I’m not under any pressure. Of course, I’m in a relationship and I thank God for that. But, I’m not going to tell you how long, but I know I’m happy. Please leave my private life out of this and stop asking if he’s Nigerian or not. You said I have this happy look on me and I’ve just told you I’m in a relationship, let me just carry on with that happiness. I’m not under any pressure to get married. People will get to know when it happens.
My sexy under wears
Oh my God, look I have bump-shorts, thongs, g-strings, Brazilian stuffs and you just name it.
It all depends on what I’m wearing. For instance, when I’m wearing a tight-fitted cloth and don’t want my panties lines to show, I can go on thong/g-string. I can even go on bump-shorts with invisible strings and you won’t even know I’m wearing a pant. So, I love sexy underwears. Why do you want to know if my man likes them on me, don’t even go there, please. There’s a saying that “You love me, you love my dog”. So, I leave it to you to interpret.
Also, my foundation is coming up this year and it’s called “Lillian Bach Foundation” for people with physical disabilities. Everyone is coming up with foundations especially my colleagues and I’m so happy and so proud of them because the people we expect to be doing these are not and we have a lot of millionaires and billionaires in this country, but what are they doing for these people who are less privileged? Nothing. But those of us in the entertainment industry with the peanut we are earning, we have the foresight and we are appreciating God for what we earn by showing love to the less-privileged around us. So I have been talking to God to show me the area He wants me to follow because I have a heart for humanity. I want to do humanitarian works, but then I can’t do everything. I can’t help the whole world. I just have to take a section of the people. This is the people I want to concentrate on, especially the lepers. Whenever I’m travelling to Ibadan, they come out of the bush and I ask if they live in the bush. And people say it’s because of their sickness. These are people with leprosy which is infectious. I wonder how they feed, how they walk. They can’t even walk. And based on what I have seen so far, I said to myself, I want to help people like these, they are human beings too. They didn’t ask for this infection that has befallen them, these people get less attention from the society when it comes to help and that is why my foundation is going after them. My foundation will be launched alongside the perfume lines this December. Otherwise, it might come earlier when I’m premiering the Bollywood-Nollywood movie I shot in India.
My delayed gospel effort
Some people said I dabbled into music but the fact is that it has always been there. I have always wanted to do music right from when I was growing up. What happened then was that I actually made an album and wanted to release it between 2000/2001. But unknown to me, the marketer who was supposed to release the album had other musicians on his label waiting to be released and when people found out that Lillian Bach was coming in and he was paying more attention to me, they didn’t like that and the work was delayed. So I had to be on the waiting list and aside that I got busy with some other things and had to put that project on hold indefinitely.
It was a gospel work and that’s what I’m still going to do. It’s not the usual boring kind of gospel songs. The kind of gospel songs I do is the type that will make you dance; kind of songs that will make you feel free in the presence of the Lord, your Father. I mean when you’re in the presence of your biological father, won’t you feel free? I like danceable songs because I like to dance a lot and at the same time passing the message of gospel across to people, yes o. So, it’s still there in the cooler just that I’ve kept it for so long; it has not been released at all.
We only aired the promotional video then. I actually shot two promotional videos for two tracks. One was a marriage song “God go bless this marriage” and the other one, a Yoruba hip-life, “E jo fun Jesu”. The title of the album then was: “Ko Sona,” which means “No road for devil,” in Yoruba language. It’s been a long time so a whole lot of things have to be done for the album to be current now. So I have to do a remix and all that. Things have changed. It’s 2001 and that’s roughly over ten years ago. My brother, I don’t know yet if the repackaged album will be released this year or not. Because there are whole lots of loads on me but I’m sure it’s definitely going to come out soon. It will come out by the special grace of God but it may not be this year because I have more workloads that I’m bringing out this year.
Special projects
I have some special projects that are very dear to my heart coming out this year. One of the projects that I have started work on is my own perfume lines. It has been on for three years now and it’s not been easy at all. I’m keeping the names under wraps for now.
By the special grace of God, it’s not been easy; you know we live in a society where we have to rely on foreign things to be able to move on in whatever things we do. So, it’s not easy at all especially for those of us in the entertainment world. For instance, J-Lo, Beyonce got perfume lines, good, but you know their society is really organized. Even with just a phone call you can organize a meeting. But it’s not like that here. Even when you call a meeting, you spend a whole day on the road. There are a whole lot of challenges we are being faced with here and that kind of slow down the processes but by the special grace of God, I’m praying and working towards launching my perfume lines by December. I’ve got my fragrances ready. I’m doing two fragrances for men and two for women. So I’m not just concentrating on women alone. I’ve got my bottle designs ready and everything, it’s just for me to put a call through and say start production now. The fragrances are coming from France. People have been asking me; why are you doing for men why not women alone? But the fact is I love perfumes and I’m crazy about them. If I start counting the perfumes I have in my room, they are close to a hundred.
I don’t know my favourite. I collect them and use them depending on the occasion. I have the ones that I just spray when I’m in the mood to just be myself. I have the ones I spray while going to work because they are mild and I have some heavy ones too, for parties because when you are in the party, dancing, sweating, mixing with people you don’t want the fragrance to go off, you just want to keep it fresh. When people say to me why are you doing for men? I tell them, well, there’s a special smell I like my man to have. Because a man should smell clean and fresh, not attracting unnecessary attention to himself. Some men smell wild; that’s when they go wearing a heavy perfume thinking that’s what makes them smell good. No, that’s not right. When a perfume is under tone, mild, fresh and good it gives that sex appeal. It makes you smell responsible, you smell classic and not like someone that has not had his bath for like ten days and he’s trying to cover that odour. So, the perfume is for both males and females.
I also have loads of businesses that I do. For instance, I just opened an underwear outlet-Curiosity Under wears, where we sell lingerie for women and of course, I’m not catering for just women alone, men too. I do for both men and women because I love underwears and I looked around and discovered that women don’t even know what underwear to wear for a particular occasion. When I jog, I see some women jogging and their boobs are bouncing and I’m like wow! Doesn’t she even know what they call sport bras? These bras are made to keep your boobs firm, prevent them from bouncing and from discomfort.
And things like sleeping wears as well. We have different texture of materials we should wear to bed. Some people have sensitive skins so they cannot even go to bed with maybe silk or satin. For such people we have some very sexy cotton-made sleeping wears for them. My outfit is at the new Adeniran Ogunsanya Shopping Mall, Surulere. I bought that shop since 2009 when they were still building it, but abandoned it because my hands were full.
Romance with film production
Actually it’s been three years now since I started producing films. The first production was a soap-opera called “Was he a leper?” We recorded 13 episodes but we understand it has to be 26 episodes before they can take it. So, we are going back to locations soon to complete the remaining episodes. By the special grace of God, it will be out this year. I also produced a Yoruba movie fully subtitled in English last year, Eletan and it is premiering in the third week of August. People have been asking me; why did you shoot a Yoruba movie? And I said well, first of all, I’m Yoruba, partly Yoruba. My mother is Yoruba and I speak the language very fluently. The inspiration for the movie was made possible by some characters in the industry, that’s the story. It was my story and concept but somebody did the screen play for me.
Invasion of Bollywood
That’s a very big one. We are still working on this project. We’ve not finished yet. After I was made up on set in India, I looked exactly like the Indians. Even the accent just came to me naturally and people started asking if I had an Indian background because the story actually started from Nigeria here but took the male-lead, Yemi Blaq and I to India. But the fact is, in those days I used to have some Indian and German friends. I just watched them speak. I know they have this funny accent and I just make fun of them. I practice it for sometimes. So I guess it just came naturally to me. The movie is entitled Naseeb, meaning fate.
The cinema culture that I grew up with inspired this project. There were a lot of cinemas around us in Lagos and I used to hang out with my mother at the cinemas a lot in those days. She loves Indian movies a lot and through her I got to like Indian movies too. Then, it used to be Indian/Chinese movies. So I grew up liking Indian movies but being in the business now, I felt well it’s high time we took Nollywood to another level. We have seen movies coming out of Hollywood, people go to record movies in London, Europe and nothing has been done in Bollywood which happens to be the second largest film making country in the world. Then I said well, with my love for Indian movies and some Indian actors, I’ll like to do collaboration with them. So the story came out of my mind but I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag for now. The movie will come out by the special grace of God before December. Currently, we are at the post production stage.
I’ve not abandoned modeling
Sincerely, I have not abandoned modeling but the truth is that things have changed. The kind of modelling I do now is called endorsements because there’s no way I will collect the kind of fees I used to get in those days from normal modelling. I was one of the pioneer models with Delta Soap, now, I’m an ambassador for Zodafone. It’s a new telecommunications company coming up. Segun Odegbami, Bimbo Akintola, Chidi Mokeme and a few other stars are all part of this endorsement. That’s the kind of modelling I do now. We’ve done our photo shoot and the telecom will launch out before the end of this year. I actually started modelling in ’89 and that was a long time ago when nobody knew modelling was here just like how so many people didn’t know when home videos actually started in Nigeria. Then we used to have people like Yemi Fawaz around. But when I became famous was the time of Delta Soap and by then I was already an actress. So I still do endorsements but not the regular modelling because they won’t be able to pay me. Companies that are going to approach me to model for them now are companies that know she’s a star in the entertainment world and are willing to pay my fees.
Talking about movies, I can’t remember my first but I joined the industry in 1997; September to be precise. I guess my debut effort was Native. The truth is that I have always loved showbiz.
Betrayed severally
There’s one thing I’m praying God to change about me and that’s what I don’t like about myself. I’m too trusting. I trust a lot and it backfires on me especially with women. People come to me and start lying and I don’t expect them to lie. I just trust people, I trust them with money and it backfires. I just have to change in that area to be on a safer side. Not as if I’m gullible but sometimes you miscalculate. It happens most when you’re dealing with people you already know. I do not want to mention names
