Lupita Nyong’o- Beauty + Brains= Blockbusters!!!

A few things in life cannot be hidden and success is one of them, every effort made to hide success always ends in futility; it’s like trying to cover the sun with a blanket.  In the same way, the success of this dark skinned and astonishingly beautiful young lady can definitely not be hidden. Lupita Nyong’o is a Kenyan actress and film maker who has made her mark in the international movie industry. She recently made her American film debut in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave as Patsey, where she appeared alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch and Brad Pitt.
The black beauty was born in 1983 in Mexico to a prominent Kenyan family and was raised primarily in Kenya. Her father is the well-known politician Anyang Nyong’o, who was the former Kenyan Minister for Medical Services and currently a professor at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Lupita attended university in the United States. After graduating from Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies, she worked on the production crew of many films, including Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes, and Mira Nairs’s The Name sake. She returned to Kenya in 2008 and starred in the Kenyan television series Shuga. In 2009, she wrote, directed, and produced the documentary In My Genes, a documentary that addresses the personal and societal challenges that people with albinism face as members of one of the most hyper-visible and misunderstood minority groups of Kenya’s predominantly black society through the experiences of eight individuals from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, which played at several film festivals.

She subsequently enrolled in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama in New Haven CT USA, where she appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Her stage credits also include playing Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, (Yale Repertory Theatre). she was also in the original production of Micheal Mitnick’s Elijah.

Lupita’s great works and acting prowess speak for her and predictions now spring up regarding the 2014 OSCAR awards coming up in March 2014, with many believing and opining that the first class Kenyan actress is eligible to battle for the award of ‘Best Supporting Actress’ alongside two major Hollywood stars Julia Roberts for her role in ‘August Osage County’ and Oprah Winfrey for her role in ‘The Butler’.

Her recent movie appearance, 12 Years a Slave which was set in pre-civil war America seeks to reveal the darkest corners of America’s past and tells the real-life story of Solomon Northup (Ejiofor, giving the screen performance of his life), a musician and free black man with a family in Saratoga, who is kidnapped and sold into slavery.
After being carted around the South, he’s forcibly sent to a plantation where other slaves including Patsey (a role played by Lupiter) a star cotton picker, satisfies the ‘predilections and peculiarities’ of the estate’s brutal owner Edwin Epps. A movie acclaimed for its rawness and originality. Lupiter will next be featured in Liam Neeson’s upcoming film Non Stop. Lupiter continues to blaze the trail as she works in harmony with the twin forces that constantly drive her to excellence; hard work and courage.