Lupita Nyong’o is having the greatest year ever. Not only did she earn one of the highest distinctions in her profession (an Oscar) but in addition to serving up style and beauty on a daily, she’s landed her first Vogue US cover. View pics from the shoot after the click.
The start of the article in the July 2014 issue of Vogue magazine pretty much says it perfectly:
In little more than a year, Lupita Nyong’o has made the leap from serious student to Oscar-winning actress and head-turning fashion star. Hamish Bowles catches up with Hollywood’s newest golden girl.
She really is Hollywood’s current golden girl and it’s so great to see a woman who doesn’t fit the often touted idea of what beauty and is. Here is this woman with a low crop haircut, radiant dark chocolate skin, who’s smart and classy AND comfortable in her own skin. With all the craziness young African and black women see on TV and on social media every day, she’s a welcomed breath of fresh air.
The Vogue article itself was fab, and the photoshoot was stunning (shot in Marrakech, Morocco). Topics discussed included:
Her family and childhood:
Lupita’s childhood, though privileged, was hardly settled. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, a political-science professor, opposed the government of Daniel arap Moi, whose turbulent presidency lasted 24 years. Nyong’o’s brother “disappeared,” and Nyong’o was eventually self-exiled to Mexico, where Lupita was born in 1983. (Her name, in the symbolic Luo tradition, is a play on the word luo itself, which means “to follow,” and Peter is her father’s name, so that run together they suggest “I followed Peter to Mexico.” Lupita also speaks Swahili.) The family eventually returned to Nairobi, where her father continued to face intermittent persecution by the system, which changed with the election of Mwai Kibaki in 2002. He is currently a senator in the Kenyan parliament.
Her journey to Yale:
After undergraduate studies, Lupita returned home to Kenya, and she experienced something of an existential crisis before having “this vivid image of myself at 60, looking back at my life and really regretting that I hadn’t tried to be an actor. That was the dawn that I needed to start pursuing this.”
She applied to Yale; if it didn’t work out, she would return to production. She had already written, directed, and produced a documentary for her Hampshire thesis project: In My Genes, about a friend’s experience living with albinism in Kenya, where the condition is considered a bad omen and those born with it are subject to discrimination—and worse (“I traveled all those thousands of miles just to learn about my next-door neighbor!” says Lupita).
Steve McQueen on casting her for 12 Years a Slave:
As she prepared for her final-semester showcases [while at Yale] (presented in New York and Los Angeles to a packed house of agents, managers, producers, and casting directors), she was also working on an audition tape for the role of Patsey.
By his account, Steve McQueen had already seen “thousands” of actresses for the role, but when he saw that tape, as he told Vogue, “It was like looking for a piece of glass on a sandy beach and finding a jewel. . . . She has this aura about her.”
More shots from the shoot:
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To read the entire article at Vogue, click here. To see the gallery, click here.
