Who is Lupita Nyong'o?

Lupita Nyong'o is a Kenyan-Mexican actress. She was raised in Kenya. At age 16, she was sent to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. She holds triple Kenyan, Mexican and American citizenship, and considers herself as "Kenyan-Mexican". She read film studies at Hampshire College, Massachusetts and, after working as a production assistant on several films, graduated from the Yale School of Drama's acting program. In 2013, she impressed cinema audiences in her film debut, as brutalized slave Patsey in acclaimed director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013). She was also the lead in MTV's award-winning drama series, Shuga (2009), appeared in the thriller Non-Stop (2014) and had roles in the big-budget films Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) and The Jungle Book (2016).

Lupita's stage credits include playing "Perdita" in "The Winter's Tale", (Yale Repertory Theater), "Sonya" in "Uncle Vanya", "Katherine" in "The Taming of the Shrew", as well as being in the original production of Michael Mitnick's "Elijah".

Lupita played the female lead, Nakia, in the 2018 superhero film Black Panther (2018).

Overview

Nicknames
Lupita Nyongo

Trivia

  • Is fluent in Luo, English, Swahili and Spanish.
  • When she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role in 12 Years a Slave (2013) in 2014, she became the first Kenyan to win an Oscar, the first African actress to win Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the first Mexican-born actress to win an Oscar.
  • Lupita is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
  • First Kenyan actress to be nominated for, and to win, an Academy Award.
  • Attributes her career choice to British actor Ralph Fiennes. While she was a production assistant on The Constant Gardener (2005) during the Nairobi/Kenya leg of the shoot, she asked Ralph for advice on becoming an actress and he told her that it was tough, but that if acting was what she really wanted to pursue, she simply had to persevere. Eight years later, after attending a screening of 12 Years a Slave (2013) at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2013, Lupita approached Ralph afterwards wondering if he'd remember her. He did, instantly, but he had no idea that she was the character Patsey whose performance had blown him away minutes earlier.