Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but clay can be art in the right hands.
Lupita Nyong'o
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.
What colonialism does is cause an identity crisis about one's own culture.
I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.
Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood. And dreams are the foundation of America.
I always love to learn new things. That's the reason I like being an actor.
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 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.
In the madness, you have to find calm.
What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.
It's great to have something to dress up for. You know, I spent three years in slacks at drama school, so now I like putting a dress on.
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.
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.
I was raised in Kenya, and I always wanted to be an actor from when I was really, really little, but the first time I thought it was something that I could make a career of was when I watched 'The Color Purple.' I think I was nine, maybe, and I saw people that looked like me - Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah.
I thrive on structure. I find my freedom in structure.
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.'
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.
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.
I was born in Mexico because my father was teaching at a school in Mexico City. I was born during the third year he was there. And when I was 16, I returned to Mexico to learn Spanish.
There's always a sense of newness with acting, because every role, you come to every role fresh.
As actors, you become an expert at starting over.
As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.
I grew up in the limelight and being the child of someone famous. So my relationship with fame is not bedazzled.
I loved make-believe. I was the child in the cupboard playing with my Barbies.
I value not being good at things, because children are not good at things.
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.
I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.
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.
Being considered a fashion star is wonderful. It's definitely a bonus thing.
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 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.
The Hollywood Film Awards were really stressful. It was the biggest press line I'd ever seen.
Home is where my family is.
I want to be uncomfortable - acting is uncomfortable.
I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me.
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.'
To this day, I love eating steak tacos before going to the red carpets.
I am very emotional about politics in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate things in a rational fashion.
I can speak of actors that I love. I love Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, her tenacity. I love Charlize Theron. She's so surprising and so exhilarating, the kinds of projects she takes on. Marion Cotillard as well.
I spent some time back in Mexico at 16 because my parents thought it would be prudent for me to learn Spanish, because I held a Mexican passport.
When I was younger, I was almost too afraid to admit that I wanted to be an actor.
I do my best work when I feel conviction to say something through the character I play. Always I want to have integrity and not compromise that.
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 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.
The set of '12 Years a Slave' was an extremely joyous one! We all recognized that we were making a powerful, necessary and beautiful film, and we weren't about doing it without that sense of responsibility, and we recognized that we needed each other to tell this story. We also knew we needed to hold each other up as we told the story.
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 definitely love fantasy and would want to be in a fantasy project.
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.
I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.P. classes.
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.
