LUPITA NYONG’O:

Breaking barriers – and box office records

The vivacious 35year-old emerged on the scene just a few years ago when she scooped an Oscar for her sterling performance in 12 Years a Slave. Now, as one of the few dark-skinned African women in popular culture, she uses her prominence to shift the balance in Hollywood and challenge Eurocentric beauty standards.

Lupita came out of nowhere, or so it may seem. But acting has been on her mind since childhood, ever since she decided she wanted to be a stage actress like her aunt. When she saw Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple (1985), she was even more inspired. But she knew how difficult it would be to make it in the cut-throat movie industry, so after university she decided to pursue a career behind the scenes instead.

While working as a production assistant in 2004, she met English actor and director Ralph Fiennes, who told her: ‘Only act if you feel you can’t live without it.’ She couldn’t – so those words changed everything. She enrolled in a master’s degree programme at the Yale School of Drama, where she excelled and appeared in many stage productions. Several weeks before graduating, her manager asked her to put herself on tape for 12 Years a Slave. It was the first time she’d ever tried out for a feature film, and, amazingly, she was cast in a lead role. She played Patsey, a slave on a cotton plantation, and went on to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Incredibly, she is only the sixth black actress to win this award, and the first African woman. Hollywood’s diversity problem is not a myth.

Since then, Lupita has become an unstoppable force in Tinseltown. She’s starred in a thriller with Liam Neeson, been in two

Star Wars films, and returned to the stage in Eclipsed, a drama by Danai Gurira.

‘I’m a child of the theatre,’ she says. ‘My father used to recite Shakespeare to me when I was five years old. It’s something that’s very, very dear to me. I’d experienced unprecedented success with my first film, and I really wanted to get back to the craft of it, just to remind myself, “Wait, what is it that I do again?” The best way to find out is on stage.’

Lupita was born in Mexico City to Kenyan parents who were in political exile at the time (she identifies now as Kenyan-Mexican and holds dual citizenship). The family returned to Kenya a year later, and her father, a college professor at the time, became a politician. Lupita grew up in Nairobi, the second child of six in a middle-class family.

She battled with her self-image from a young age.

‘If you turn on the TV and you’re not represented there, you become invisible to yourself. And there was very little of myself that I saw on TV or in the movies that I was watching, or in the magazines that were lying around in salons or the house,’ she said. She recalls trying out for some spots on TV and being told that she was ‘too dark for television’. And when she was a teenager, she begged her parents to let her relax her hair to be like the other girls in class.

‘Around 13 or 14, I had such a rough time with being teased and feeling really unpretty,’ she said.

Fast forward 20 years and Lupita is a fashion icon who has appeared on the cover of Vogue four times, as well as the face of luxury French brand Lancôme – their first black ambassadress.

‘Now I love my hair,’ she says. ‘I love it because I’ve also been able to really embrace the stuff it can do. It’s like clay in the right hands. Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but art in the right hands.’

Art indeed – we’ve seen her rock a gorgeous ’fro and braids, and at the 2018 Oscars she wore her hair in an exquisite traditional Rwandan style; an elegant updo with golden thread running through it.

We all know the importance of representation, and Lupita has noted positive changes since she first entered the industry, such as how Lancôme have expanded their foundation colour range. But she was forced to speak up last year when a magazine photographer edited her hair to be more in line with European ‘beauty’ standards. She wrote on Instagram: ‘As I have made clear so often in the past with every fibre of my being, I embrace my natural heritage and despite having grown up thinking light skin and straight, silky hair were the standards of beauty, I now know that my dark skin and kinky, coily hair are beautiful too.’

It’s clear she won’t let anyone make her feel ‘less than’ ever again. Also, she knows how important her presence is to young people who might not have seen many dark-skinned women in the media.

‘I know being an African woman on a Hollywood platform is not something you see every day, and I feel how special that is and I respect it. And I signed up for it. I wouldn’t trade it,’ she said. ‘I definitely don’t think it should be left up to me to represent an entire continent in this industry. And that’s not the case. But someone has to go first, and if one of those people is me, then – yes, please.’ Of course, Lupita’s latest triumph is the box-office sensation,

Black Panther (2018). Based on a 1966 Marvel character, it’s the first comic book adaptation to feature a largely black cast, and was a truly groundbreaking moment in film. Lupita plays Nakia, badass spy and ex-lover of the young leader of an advanced fictional African nation, Wakanda, which has never been colonised and has become a powerful nation without any interference.

‘It’s not often that we have this kind of global cinematic event where the African is the aspiration. It’s an extremely powerful statement, that we have people of a darker hue in a world where they’re not defined by strife or oppression. That’s incredibly refreshing and beautiful – it treats the soul, really,’ she said.

The film involves strong female characters (both mentally and physically), and Lupita had to prepare with an intensive martial arts boot camp that included judo, ju-jitsu and silat, as well as Filipino martial arts. She says she

is ‘eager and willing to tell stories where women are at the forefront and have agency, especially African women… That we see the kind of women we know in our real lives reflected on the screen is extremely important.’

Going forward, the actress has no concerns about her skin colour limiting her in her career.

‘I got such a head start in this industry that it is not in my best interests to look for struggle. That’s such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me,’ she says.

‘I don’t think of what I don’t have; I think of what I do, and use that to get the next thing.’

The next thing, or things, sound incredibly exciting. In August this year she’ll share the screen with Viola Davis in The Woman King, a true story about an all-female military unit in 18th and 19thcentury Africa. She’s also optioned Chimamanda’s Ngozi Adichie’s compelling novel Americanah for a miniseries. And maybe best of all from our point of view, she’ll star in the film adaption of Trevor Noah’s bestselling book,

Born a Crime, playing the role of his mother. And in between all of these projects she’s finding the time to write a children’s book, too!

Sulwe (which means ‘star’ in Lupita’s mother tongue) Luo is the story of a five-year-old girl growing up in Kenya. The book will grapple with themes that Lupita herself has struggled with, and is due for release next year.

Lupita is a breath of fresh air in Hollywood. She’s vibrant, full of fun, but also composed and thoughtful, and not afraid to speak up.

‘I am here. I am happy to be here,’ she says. ‘I know this industry was not made for me. But I’m not going to apologise for being here.’