With over 40 years in the industry‚ veteran actor Owen Sejake has a wealth of knowledge to share‚ but has revealed that some young artists have bad attitudes‚ which makes it hard to mentor them.

In an interview with TshisaLIVE‚ Owen expressed his distress at the blatant disregard he’s seen from young people in the industry when the older generation tries to give them advice.

Owen said he’s been labelled as “troublesome and hard to work with” because of his no-nonsense approach when it comes to the art.

“The crux of the matter is often we meet young artits and directors that have attitudes towards us because they’ve been told ‘Ntate (Mr) Sejake is difficult to work with’. These people are our children but it then becomes a competition. Yet we have given them the long rope so that they can take the (art) forward.”

The actor told TshisaLIVE that he found that the younger people lose sight of the bigger picture when promised big houses and big cars.

“Once you’ve reached the upper level then you think that you don’t need anyone. It then becomes a situation of us versus them. They are influenced into thinking ‘why do you worry about people like Owen? When you can bring your own family up‚ get yourself a nice car and move into a nice house by finding people who just want to ‘work’.”

Owen’s record speaks for itself having been featured in big productions such as Tsotsi‚ Ocean Harvest‚ Soul City‚ Yizo Yizo to mention a few. He’s currently on the latest Ferguson Film production The Imposter.

The multilingual actor said he was disappointed by young actors’ desire to chase money instead of making an actual impact in the industry. He added that many young actors have told him he’s too “judgmental” when he tells them his opinions.

The veteran said the industry still faced a lot of problems that could only be “fixed” by closing the generation gap and attempting to tackle things like “marginalisation in the industry” together.