Lupita Nyong'o

Lupita Nyong'o was born in Mexico City on March 1, 1983, to Kenyan parents Dorothy and Peter Anyang' Nyong'o. Her father, a political scientist, later served as Kenya's governor of Kisumu County and as a cabinet secretary. The family returned to Kenya when Lupita was less than a year old, and she grew up in Nairobi. At 14, she made her professional acting debut as Juliet in a Nairobi production of Romeo and Juliet. She attended Hampshire College in Massachusetts, graduating in 2003 with a degree in film and theater studies. Before becoming internationally known on screen, she directed, produced, and edited In My Genes, a 2009 documentary about albinism in Kenya.

Nyong'o earned a master's degree in acting from Yale School of Drama in 2012. Soon afterward, she was cast as Patsey in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, adapted from Solomon Northup's memoir. Patsey is an enslaved woman whose skill at picking cotton makes her the target of violent abuse by plantation owner Edwin Epps. Nyong'o's performance won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2014, making her the first Kenyan actor to win an Academy Award in competitive acting. It also brought her Screen Actors Guild Award recognition and widespread critical attention. In her acceptance speech, she quoted her mother and addressed the meaning of dreams, beauty, and resilience.

Her subsequent film roles include Maz Kanata, the motion-capture pirate and former smuggler in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi; Nakia, a Wakandan spy in Marvel's Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; and the voice of the wolf Raksha in Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book. In Jordan Peele's 2019 horror film Us, she played Adelaide Wilson and Adelaide's doppelgänger, Red, using distinct physical movement and vocal choices for the two characters. She received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for that dual performance. Nyong'o also appeared in the 2022 action thriller The 355 and starred in A Quiet Place: Day One, released in 2024. In 2015, she made her Broadway debut as an orphaned teenage girl in Eclipsed, written by Danai Gurira.

Beyond acting, Nyong'o published the children's book Sulwe in 2019. Illustrated by Vashti Harrison, it follows a Kenyan girl with dark skin who learns to value her appearance. Nyong'o has spoken about colorism, and her book became a New York Times bestseller. In 2020, she narrated the documentary series Serengeti.