Lupita Nyong'o

Lupita Amondi Nyong'o, born March 1, 1983, in Mexico City to Kenyan parents — her father Peter Anyang' Nyong'o is a Kenyan politician and senator — and raised primarily in Nairobi, Kenya, is an Academy Award-winning actress of extraordinary depth, elegance, and moral authority who holds dual Kenyan and Mexican nationality and has established herself as one of the most distinctive and important screen presences of her generation. She spent her childhood between Kenya and Mexico City, absorbing two cultures and languages, before returning to Kenya as a teenager. She pursued film studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, before completing an MFA in Acting from the Yale School of Drama in 2012. Her film debut came with the Kenyan drama Shuga (2009) before Steve McQueen cast her as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave (2013) — a harrowing portrayal of an enslaved woman on a Louisiana plantation in the antebellum South that was immediately recognized as one of the most powerful acting debuts in cinema history, winning her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at thirty, making her only the ninth Black actress to win the prize. Her subsequent career encompassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) as Maz Kanata, Black Panther (2018) as the warrior Nakia, Us (2019) in a dual role for Jordan Peele for which she received the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). She is also a children's book author, having published Sulwe (2019), a New York Times bestseller about skin tone and self-acceptance, demonstrating a commitment to representation that extends far beyond her screen work.