Lupita Nyong'o is the GLAMOUR cover personality for Dec 2014

A year ago, nobody knew who Lupita Nyong'o was.  Then 12 years a slave was released and immediately she captured the world.  After that Lupita redefined what success is.  The film 12 years a slave won her an Oscar.

 

 31-year-Lupita Nyongo'o was born in Mexico after her political activist father went into exile.  She later came back with the family to Kenya where she was educated as a child before attending college in Massachusetts.  She later finished from Yale in 2012 with a Master's degree.

More photos after the cutShe starred in the popular Africa soap opera Shuga, which explored controversial subjects like rape and HIV/AIDS, and also directed a film of her own, In My Genes, which dealt with discrimination against people with albinism in Kenya. 

Said to be fiercely intelligent and multicultural, Lupita is termed a twenty-first-century global citizen.