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."
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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