Awkwafina

Nora Lum, known professionally as Awkwafina, born June 2, 1988, in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, to a Chinese American father and a Korean American mother who died when Nora was four, raised primarily by her paternal grandmother in Queens, is an American actress, comedian, and rapper whose rapid ascent from viral internet comedienne to Golden Globe-winning actress to franchise film star represents one of the most unlikely and charming success stories in contemporary American entertainment. Raised by her Chinese American father and her Cantonese-speaking grandmother in the Flushing and Forest Hills neighborhoods of Queens — a bicultural, multilingual upbringing in one of New York City's most diverse and immigrant-rich communities — she developed the sardonic, fish-out-of-water Queens sensibility that would define her comedy and eventually her dramatic work. She began rapping as a teenager, posting songs on YouTube that attracted viral attention, most notably her 2012 track My Vag, a comedy hip-hop response to Mickey Avalon's My Dick that went viral and launched her internet career. She released her debut mixtape Yellow Ranger (2014) and her debut studio album, a self-titled album (2018), building a significant hip-hop following alongside her comedy persona. Her acting career accelerated through small roles in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), and the comedy Ocean's 8 (2018) before her breakthrough lead role as the comedian Awkwafina in the dark comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and her extraordinary dramatic lead performance in The Farewell (2019), Lulu Wang's deeply personal film about a Chinese American family's decision to keep their grandmother's terminal cancer diagnosis secret — a performance of such delicate, heartbreaking emotional honesty that it won her the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical, making her the first woman of Asian descent to win that award.