Lupita Nyong'o

Life and work

Lupita Amondi Nyong'o (born 1 March 1983) is an actress who has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, an Actor Award and a Daytime Emmy Award, as well as nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. She is known for her roles in films, television series, and stage productions such as 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; the play Eclipsed (2015), for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play; Black Panther (2018) and its sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022); the horror films Us (2019) and A Quiet Place: Day One (2024); the animated film The Wild Robot (2024); and Christopher Nolan's epic The Odyssey (2026).

In 2014, Nyong'o was named the most beautiful woman by People. In 2019, she authored the children's book Sulwe, which became a number-one New York Times Best-Seller. In 2020, she was named one of Africa's 50 Most Powerful Women by Forbes. Nyong'o has been nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator for narrating the documentary series Serengeti.

Lupita Amondi Nyong'o was born on 1 March 1983 in Mexico City, Mexico. She is the second of six children. Both her mother, Dorothy Ogada Buyu, and her father, Anyang' Nyong'o, are Kenyan and are of Luo descent. It is a Luo tradition to name a child after the events of the day, so Nyong'o's parents gave her the Spanish name Lupita, a diminutive of Guadalupe. At the time of her birth, her father was a visiting lecturer in political science at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. The family had left Kenya in 1980 for a period because of political repression and unrest; Lupita's uncle, Charles Nyong'o, disappeared after he was thrown off a ferry in 1980.

Nyong'o's family returned to Kenya when she was under a year old, after her father was appointed as a professor at the University of Nairobi. She grew up primarily in Nairobi, and has described her upbringing as middle class and suburban. Her family was artistic, and family get-togethers often included performances by the children and trips to see plays. Nyong'o was raised as a Christian and attended an all-girls Catholic school for the first six years of her life. She later attended Rusinga International School, where she performed in school plays.

At the age of 14, Nyong'o made her professional acting debut as Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in a production by the Nairobi-based repertory company Phoenix Players. While a member of the Phoenix Players, she also performed in the plays On The Razzle and There Goes The Bride. She credits the performances of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple with inspiring her to pursue an acting career.

When Nyong'o was 16, her parents sent her to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. She lived in Taxco, Guerrero, and took classes at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México's Learning Centre for Foreigners. She later attended St. Mary's School in Nairobi, where she received an IB Diploma in 2001, finishing second in her class. She then attended Hampshire College in the United States, graduating with a bachelor's degree in film and theatre studies. Nyong'o holds Mexican, Kenyan, and U.S. citizenship and identifies as "Kenyan-Mexican".

Nyong'o's father is a former member of the Kenyan Parliament and the Kenyan Senate, and is a former Minister for Medical Services. He is currently the governor of Kisumu County.

Nyong'o began her career working on the production crew for several films, including Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener (2005), Mira Nair's The Namesake (2006), and Salvatore Stabile's Where God Left His Shoes (2007). She cites Ralph Fiennes, the British star of The Constant Gardener, as someone who inspired her to pursue a professional acting career. In 2008, she starred in the short film East River, directed by Marc Grey and shot in Brooklyn. She returned to Kenya that same year and appeared in the Kenyan television series Shuga, an MTV Base Africa/UNICEF drama about HIV/AIDS prevention.

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