Lupita Nyong’o Parents: Meet Peter and Dorothy – Lupita Amondi Nyong’o is a Mexican-born Kenyan actress.
She has received numerous honors, including an Academy Award and nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Tony Award.
She was born in Mexico City, where her father was teaching, to Kenyan politician Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o and raised in Kenya since the age of three. She attended Hampshire College in the United States and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in film and theatre studies.
She later worked as a production assistant in Hollywood. She made her acting debut in the short film East River in 2008, and she later returned to Kenya to star in the television series Shuga (2009–2012).
When Lupita Nyong’o was less than a year old, her family relocated to Kenya, where her father was appointed as a professor at the University of Nairobi.
She describes her upbringing as “middle class, suburban” and that it was primarily in a creative family. She was born and raised in Nairobi. Children’s performances and theater outings were frequently a part of family gatherings. She attended Rusinga International School in Kenya, where she took part in school plays.
Lupita Nyong’o made her professional acting debut at the age of 14 in a production of Romeo and Juliet by the Nairobi-based repertory company Phoenix Players.
Nyong’o appeared in the plays On The Razzle and There Goes The Bride while a member of the Phoenix Players. Lupita Nyong’o credits Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey’s performances in The Color Purple with inspiring her to pursue a professional acting career.
It is on record that the parents of Lupita sent her to Mexico to learn Spanish when she was 16 years old. Nyong’o lived in Taxco, Guerrero, for seven months and attended classes at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Learning Centre for Foreigners.
Nyong’o went on to attend St. Mary’s School in Nairobi, where she earned an IB Diploma in 2001 with a mean grade of 6 out of 7 and finished second in her class. She went to college in the United States, where she graduated from Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies.
Some of her other family members include Isis Nyong’o, a media and technology executive who Forbes magazine named one of Africa’s most powerful young women, Tavia Nyong’o, a scholar and professor at New York University, Omondi Nyong’o, a paediatric ophthalmologist in Palo Alto, California, and Kwame Nyong’o, one of Kenya’s top animators and leading technology experts.
Lupita Nyong’o Parents: Meet Peter and Dorothy
Lupita’s father is known as Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, and her mother is Dorothy Ogada Buyu. Nyong’o’s mother is the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation as well as the owner of her own communications firm.
Her father finished his undergraduate studies at Makerere University in Uganda, where he received a first-class honors degree in political science. In 1969/70, he was the Guild President of Makerere.
Following that, he pursued graduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he earned an MA and a PhD in political science in 1977.
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