Lupita Nyong'o is one of Glamour magazine's Women of the Year.
That's no surprise to most
people: The actress won an Oscar for "12 Years a Slave" this year and has been
popping up on "best dressed" and "most beautiful" lists ever since
Nevertheless, she tells the magazine that the
attention she's received has been overwhelming.
"Right now I'm still adjusting. I
guess I feel catapulted into a different place; I have a little whiplash," she
said. "I did have a dream to be an actress, but I didn't think about being
famous. And I haven't yet figured out how to be a celebrity; that's something
I'm learning, and I wish there were a course on how to handle it." Continue...
She couldn't even imagine what
winning the Oscar would be like, she observed. "I don't think I will ever be
able to really articulate how bizarre it was to hear my name at the Academy
Awards. I'd watched in my pajamas the year before!" she said. "I felt numb --
dazed and confused. I remember feeling light -- weightless. More like limbo than
cloud nine."
The Oscar has helped launch her
career into the stratosphere. Nyong'o has big things ahead, including next
year's "Star Wars" movie.
But the actress, who was born in
Mexico of Kenyan parents, mentions that it wasn't always so. For her, Oprah
Winfrey wasn't just a role model but a "reference point," and seeing Winfrey and
Whoopi Goldberg in "The Color Purple" was key to her belief that she could
become successful.
She hopes she can have the same
effect on people who see her.
"I've heard people talk about
images in popular culture changing, and that makes me feel great, because it
means that the little girl I was, once upon a time, has an image to instill in
her that she is beautiful, that she is worthy," she said. "Until I saw people
who looked like me, doing the things I wanted to, I wasn't so sure it was a
possibility."
The December issue of Glamour
hits newsstands November 11.
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