We would like to add our ‘African Voice’ to those celebrating the achievement of Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, who upstaged many of her better-known peers in accepting her Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the recent 86th annual ceremony and seemed to brim with confidence in a flowing blue Prada dress that drew accolades both from fashion circles and elsewhere.
But it wasn’t always this way. Before the Oscars, the 12 Years A Slave actress spoke candidly when she picked up her Best Breakthrough Performance Award at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood luncheon about wishing her skin was lighter until Sudanese model Alek Wek broke though on the catwalk scene.
“She was dark as night, she was on all of the runways and in every magazine and everyone was talking about how beautiful she was,” Ms Nyong’o said. “Even Oprah called her beautiful and that made it a fact. My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome and all of a sudden Oprah was telling me it wasn’t.
“It was perplexing and I wanted to reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside of me. When I saw Alek, I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now, I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far away gatekeepers of beauty.
Of her formative years, the Mexico-born actress, who celebrated her 31st birthday the day before the Academy Awards ceremony, said: “I tried to negotiate with God. I told him I would stop stealing sugar cubes at night if he gave me what I wanted. I would listen to my mother’s every word and never lose my school sweater again if he just made me a little lighter. But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never listened.”
Lupita was born in Mexico City, where her father was a visiting lecturer in political science, but raised in Kenya from the age of one. She went to school in Kenya before relocating and graduating with a degree in film and theatre studies in the US. She subsequently graduated from the Yale School of Drama’s acting program.
Lupita’s stunning feature debut as Patsey, in Steve McQueen’s harrowing ‘Best Picture’ dramatisation of Solomon Northup’s account of his 12 years as a slave was honoured with the New Hollywood Award at the 17th annual Hollywood Film Awards and helped to cement her place on Variety’s prestigious annual 10 Actors to Watch list.
As well as acting, Lupita is also an award-winning film-maker. She wrote, directed, and produced In My Genes; a fascinating documentary about the treatment of Kenya’s often misunderstood albino population.
