Lupita Nyong'o
I don't need to be so full of myself that I feel I am without flaw. I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time. I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities.Collection: Relationship
It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.Collection: Experience
It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.Collection: Funny
Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but clay can be art in the right hands.Collection: Art
Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood. And dreams are the foundation of America.Collection: Dreams
Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet. The shame doesn't even belong to us, but we still experience it because we're a part of the African race. If it happened to one, it happened to all. We carry that burden.Collection: Experience
I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.Collection: Happiness
I thrive on structure. I find my freedom in structure.
My father used to act in high school. He was in a production of 'Othello;' I don't know who he played, but it wasn't Othello. He would talk about it, though, and read Shakespeare to me.
I always love to learn new things. That's the reason I like being an actor.
The muscles you flex in theater are muscles that you really need. I must always find a way to get back there. It's irreplaceable.
I want to be uncomfortable - acting is uncomfortable.
Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me. He asked me, 'So what is it you want to do?' I very shyly, timidly admitted that I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and he said, 'Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do - only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.'
I'm still trying to get over the fact that my name is being mentioned with people like Brad Pitt.
I'm interested in generating work for myself. I have trouble with this waiting-for-the-phone-to-ring lifestyle, especially after drama school, which was so creatively fulfilling.
The Hollywood Film Awards were really stressful. It was the biggest press line I'd ever seen.
What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.
Growing up, I had really bad skin. I had a skin disorder. Yes, I did. And my mother went to great lengths to try to find something to remedy it. I remember she took a trip to Madagascar and came back with all these alternative, medicinal herbs and stuff. They didn't smell so good, but I think they worked some magic.
Being a part of '12 Years a Slave' has been one of the most profound experiences of my life.
Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It... keeps us honest.
As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally.
My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico.
My mother talked about the stories I used to spin as a child of three, before I started school. I would tell this story about what school I went to and what uniform I wore and who I talked to at lunchtime and what I ate, and my mother was like, 'This girl does not even go to school.'
I had moved back to Kenya after undergrad, and I went through this crisis of, 'What is my life going to be about?'
I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying, We don't have work for black women.'
I definitely love fantasy and would want to be in a fantasy project.
I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on.
I grew up in a world where the majority of people were black, so that wasn't the defining quality of anyone. When you're describing someone, you don't start out with 'he's black, he's white.'
There is something about acting that's mysterious and magical because there is only so much I can do to prepare, and then I have to just let go and breathe and believe that it will come through.
I learned at Yale, one of the biggest lessons was to learn how special I am and therefore how totally unspecial I am. I was special among everyone else who was special. The fact that we're all so individual and that's what makes us special.
Human beings have an instinct for freedom.
I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.P. classes.
Personally, I don't ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.
The first time I cut all my hair off was when I was 19. I just got fed up going to the salon every week. I'd had enough! On a whim, it was off. It's low-maintenance.
I am very emotional about politics in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate things in a rational fashion.
I don't ever want to be president - let's just get that out of the way.
I have dabbled in martial arts all my life, since I was 7, maybe - tae kwon do, capoeira, Muay Thai. It's always been an interest because in martial arts there is a mind/body relationship.
I value not being good at things, because children are not good at things.
That's such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don't think of what I don't have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.
I was part of a growing community of women who were secretly dealing with harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But I also did not know that there was a world in which anybody would care about my experience with him.
Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors, we are paid to do very intimate things in public. That's why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel, and you show up.
I hope we can form a community where a woman can speak up about abuse and not suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed.
I'm Mexican and Kenyan at the same time. I've seen the quarrels over my nationality, but I'm Kenyan and Mexican at the same time. So again, I am Mexican-Kenyan, and I am fascinated by carne asada tacos.
I didn't love my hair when I was a child. It was lighter than my skin, which made me not love it so much. I was really kind of envious of girls with thicker, longer, more lush hair.
I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin, and my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come, and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first.
Before the advent of the white man, black people were doing all kinds of things with their hair. The rejection of kinks and curls did come with the white man.
What colonialism does is cause an identity crisis about one's own culture.
In the madness, you have to find calm.
I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me.
Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV. There was very little Kenyan material, because we had an autocratic ruler who stifled our creative expression.