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.
The daughter of Kenyan politician Anyang' Nyong'o, she was born in Mexico City and was raised in Kenya from the age of three. She earned a bachelor's degree in film and theatre studies from Hampshire College in the United States, then began her career in Hollywood as a production assistant. In 2008, she made her acting debut in the short film East River and returned to Kenya to star in the television series Shuga (2009–2012). After earning a master's degree in acting from the Yale School of Drama, she had her first feature film role as Patsey in Steve McQueen's biopic 12 Years a Slave (2013), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Nyong'o made her Broadway debut as a teenage orphan in the play Eclipsed (2015), for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She had a motion capture role as Maz Kanata in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019) and a voice role as the wolf Raksha in The Jungle Book (2016), before appearing as Nakia in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Black Panther (2018) and its sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). She subsequently starred in the horror films Us (2019) and A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), performed the lead voice role in the animated film The Wild Robot (2024), and portrayed the characters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra in 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.
In 2009, Nyong'o wrote, directed, and produced the documentary In My Genes, about the discriminatory treatment of Kenya's albino population. It played at several film festivals and won first prize at the 2008 Five College Film Festival. The same year, Nyong'o directed the music video for Wahu's song "The Little Things You Do", which was nominated for the Best Video Award at the MTV Africa Music Awards 2009.
2010s: Breakthrough and rise to prominence
While pursuing a master's degree in acting at the Yale School of Drama, Nyong'o appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale. Her acting talent earned her the university's Herschel Williams Prize in the 2011–12 academic year.
Upon graduating from Yale, Nyong'o landed her breakthrough role when she was cast in Steve McQueen's historical drama 12 Years a Slave (2013). The film is based on the life of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free-born African-American man of upstate New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Washington, D.C. in 1841. Nyong'o portrays Patsey, a slave who works alongside Northup at a Louisiana cotton plantation. Ian Freer of Empire wrote that Nyong'o gave "one of the most committed big-screen debuts imaginable", while Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said she "imbues Patsey with grit and radiant grace".
For her performance, Nyong'o was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, including Best Supporting Actress, which she won. She also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the sixth Black actress, the second African and the first Mexican to win the award. In addition, she became the first Kenyan actress to win an Academy Award. Bibby Sowry of The Telegraph said that the blue Prada dress Nyong'o wore to the Academy Awards "cemented itself in Hollywood history". In 2025, Nyongo recalled that her Academy Award win did not immediately translate into offers for leading roles. Instead, she was offered what she described as stereotyped roles, such as slave roles. At that point, she decided she would rather work less than perpetuate stereotypes that are expected of Africans.
Nyong'o's first role after her Academy Award was the CGI character Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Nyong'o had wanted to play a role where her appearance was not central to the character, and performing Maz through motion capture provided a different challenge from her role as Patsey. Scott Mendelson of Forbes described Maz as "the center of the film's best sequence", while Stephanie Zacharek of Time called her a "delightful minor character". Nyong'o was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 42nd Saturn Awards and Best Virtual Performance at the 2016 MTV Movie Awards for her performance as Maz.
Also in 2015, Nyong'o starred as an unnamed girl in the play Eclipsed, written by Danai Gurira. The play takes place during the chaos of the Second Liberian Civil War, where the captive wives of a rebel officer band together to form a community, until the balance of their lives is upset by the arrival of a new girl, played by Nyong'o. Eclipsed became the Public Theater's fastest-selling new production in recent history and won Nyong'o an Obie Award for Outstanding Performance. In 2016, the play premiered on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre. It was the first play to premiere on Broadway with an all-Black and all female creative cast and crew. Nyong'o had understudied the play at Yale in 2009 and was terrified to play the character onstage. She turned down film roles in favor of the production.