Happy Birthday, Lupita Nyong'o: Fem Film Rogue Icon Spotlight

Lupita is a gem to film, fashion, and hair.

Is there no other person who steals hearts more than Lupita Nyong'o?

The Mexican born daughter of Kenyan parents is a multi-talented, resilient, award-winning force unlike any other. She has won an Oscar, a NAACP Image Award, an ABFF Award, two Black Reel Awards, an Obie Award, an Independent Spirit Award, two Gold Derby Awards, a SAG Award, and a slew of other critics honors. She has also been nominated for a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Satellite, two BAFTAs, an Empire Award, a Drama League Award, and endless other nods.

And she just turns thirty-five-years young today.

Lupita Nyong'o at the Academy Awards, winning for Best Supporting Actress, 2013.

Lupita at the SAG Awards, 2013.

Lupita at the Met Gala: Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, 2016.

Lupita at the Star Wars: The Last Jedi premiere, 2017.

Lupita at the Black Panther premiere, 2018.

Six years ago, Nyong'o stepped on the scene with pure dynamism and infectious sweetness, an accomplished Yale grad, a speaker of four languages (English, Spanish, Luo, and Swahili), a former understudy for Danai Gurira's debut play for another great actress Adepero Oduye (who she starred alongside in her first feature film, Steve McQueen's Oscar winning 12 Years a Slave). She seduced everyone with her intelligently authentic awards speeches, fabulous red carpet style, captivating smile, and short cropped natural. The latter made her fearless, a unique iconic ally among the plethora of black women celebrities who were not brave enough to rock anti-Europeanism. It was a candid, boastful political statement that championed the way we grew out our hair, not a thing of shame, but a beautiful, inspiring manifesto written in her coifed TWA, her twist outs, her bantu knots. Her gorgeous dark hued skin, luminous and glowing, also drew in rave reviews from everyone all over the world who occasionally saw themselves reflected on the big screen until Nyong'o shined incredible light. Colorism be damned.

Ayira (Lupita Nyong'o) wants more than what Ty (Pepe Haze) can offer her.

I first watched Nyong'o's work on Shuga, a MTV produced series that explores the consequences of unprotected sexual relationships in Kenya (later moving to Nigeria). She played Ayira, a spry, naïve college girl in a long-term relationship, using rich older men as a catalyst for making it big. Although at times, Ayira carelessly jeopardizing her relationship challenged relationship morals, yet Nyong'o's evenly layered performance made the character almost worth rooting for.

Eventually, Nyong'o and Gurira reunited for Eclipsed, the first Broadway play with an all female cast and female director, a drama with a few lighthearted moments about Liberian soldiers who escape turmoil and sexual abuse. Nyong'o's character changing from sweet, innocent child-woman to fierce, indestructible soldier shared a great depth of vulnerability, strength, dignity, and grace.

Rita (Akosua Busia) provides The Girl (Lupita Nyong'o) comfort.

Later, Queen of Katwe, a thoughtful, generous love letter to Africa, directed by the exceptional Mira Nair is a piece that I simply cannot recommend enough. From the splendid shot on location in Africa, to a rich, humorous, bittersweet story of a young chess girl living in the village, to that great Young Cardamom & HAB #1 Spice song/video, this may sound too Disney, but I must say that the story is about believing in dreams and defeating all odds-- gender, race, class, etc. Nyong'o is a reluctant mother who doesn't want her daughter to have high, grand hopes. Madina Nawanga has a great debut here as the real-life Phiona Mutesi and we hope that in the future, she too will become a dominant media star as well.

A step up from a Barbie.

Nyong'o's portrayal as Nakia is certainly a dream come to life for little black girls whom rarely see themselves as heroes, as vigilantes. Ryan Coogler fleshes out the character, for compassionate spy Nakia is T'Challa's key love interest-- a rare win in the Marvel Universe while Falcon, another black male hero, still plays only second fiddle to Captain America, but that's another story entirely. However, Nakia loves her freedom and wants to share that liberty with those in need, especially oppressed black women all over Africa. That makes her valid and rootable. Plus, her hairstyles and outfits are off the chain.

Nyong'o is also a producer, director, and writer: her first piece (she served as publicist, sound editor, and editor as well), a short called In My Genes explores albinoism in Africa and she is penning a children's book on colorism in Kenya entitled Sulwe, means "star" in Luo. It will be released next January. She advocates against poaching, launching a campaign called "Minds and Hearts," wrote a raw, poignant New York Times piece on her personal experience with serial sexual harrasser/rapist Harvey Weinstein, and vows to work solely with women and male feminist directors.

Lupita Nyong'o receiving an affectionate hug from her bestie, playwright/actress Danai Gurira on promotion of Eclipsed on Broadway.

Currently, in addition to being in Black Panther, the top movie in the world right now, it has been announced that Nyong'o and Gurira are teaming up once again to adapt Chimamnda Ngozi Adichie's brilliant novel, Americanah with Gurira writing the screenplay and Nyong'o starring and producing. Nyong'o will also be producing and starring in Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime. Nyong'o's next film is Abe Forsythe's Little Monsters, which doesn't yet have a U.S. release date, and Ava DuVernay will be penning and producing a buddy film starring Nyong'o and Rihanna for Netflix.  

With so much happening on the horizon, Lupita Nyong'o remains a diligent, influential figure in black culture, having covered Vogue Magazine a record for times as a black woman (despite putting them in check for incorrectly guessing her Met Gala Ball hair inspiration) and is the first black woman to be brand ambassador for French beauty company, Lancôme.

Lupita is an inspiration that defies Western beauty standards, brazenly showing everyone the effervescent enthrallment of the black woman, wearing any color, any pattern, challenging the ever critical eye with her style, her acting choices, and producing decisions. Armored with privileged education and two loving parents and family, she brings that sharp edged tenacity and passion to those desperate to see themselves, hear themselves in all forms of visual media.

Here are some of her most memorable quotes:

"What I have learned about myself is that I don't have to be anybody else. Myself is good enough." From backstage after monumental Oscars win, 2013

"My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome and all of a sudden, Oprah was telling me it wasn’t. It was perplexing and I wanted to reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside of me. When I saw Alek I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now, I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far away gatekeepers of beauty, but around me the preference for light skin prevailed. To the beholders that I thought mattered, I was still unbeautiful. And my mother again would say to me, "You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you." And these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be." Read her full Black Woman in Hollywood speech here, 2014.

"Go where you are loved. Danai Gurira, who wrote Eclipsed, shared that with me, and it's a valuable thought that's really stuck. When you're trying to find collaborators, you need to go where you are loved—because that's precisely the place where your dreams and goals will be nurtured. People who see the best in you bring out the best in you." Oprah, 2016