From the outside looking in, gorgeous actress Lupita Nyong’o is living her dreams and having the time of her life! Aside from winning numerous awards for her first major film role in 12 Years A Slave, the Yale grad has been featured in numerous prestigious fashion mags across the globe and has become America’s sweetheart.
Unfortunately for Lupita, the world-wide attention and her new found fame has been hard to adjust to.
In the latest issue of New York Magazine, which also features a beautiful spread, she reveals that she was disturbed by a recent run in with the paparazzi and she now lives in a bubble:
I don’t know who they were waiting for, but they definitely chased me down, which is a startling, disturbing experience. I did not expect it. I went into flight mode.[...]There are so many highlights that are no longer highlights. I’m living a very swollen life.
I’ve been in a bubble. I haven’t been out much. I haven’t gotten used to being recognized.” More than that, “I was blissfully ignorant of the magnitude of the project I was in or what it was going to mean for the world.
In the interview, she also revealed that her family fled to Mexico City after the disappearance of her uncle before she was born, and how it was hard to adjust to such a liberal society when she moved to America:
Her politician father fought against Kenya’s regime when his brother disappeared under suspicious circumstances
“His car was found on the ferry in the town he lived in with a pair of his shoes and no sign of him,” Nyong’o says. Worried that he might be the next one to go missing, her father relocated, figuring that “no one would look for a Kenyan in Mexico.” Nyong’o was born shortly thereafter and, in the Kenyan tradition of naming a child after what’s happening at the time of his or her birth, was given the name Lupita, a diminutive of Guadalupe. “Every single laundromat, grocery store, everything is called Lupita in Mexico.”
On moving to America and needing structure
“I thrive on structure. I find my freedom in structure. It was very hard to adjust to an individualistic and very liberal system. I mean, my upbringing, I would iron my clothes every night. I would plan what I wore the night before, and then I would iron it. That’s just the way my mom raised us. Then I got to Hampshire, where clothing is sometimes optional and all this kind of thing. I was mortified.”
I see a book in the works!
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