Gaining accolades, friends and steam

Actress Lupita Nyong'o attends the 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 12, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California. Nyong’o has won the best supporting actress at the 20th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards for her role in 12 Years a Slave. PHOTO/AFP

What you need to know:

  • A steady parade of actors-turned-fans, like Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey (they share a stylist) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson of Modern Family (he voted for her, he said) lined up to pose for photos and deliver kudos. In between, she and her 12 Years cast mate Benedict Cumberbatch danced to a Lionel Richie song.
  • In her audition, McQueen counselled Lupita that, despite her suicidal suffering, Patsey is not noble. “That was something that he repeated, and I repeated to myself thereafter,” she said. “She was just simple, and she was just trying to get by on a daily basis. She’s not sentimental about her pain.” To play that, Lupita added, “I had to have the same kind of attitude.”
  • That attitude was challenged by scenes in which Patsey is brutally raped, whipped and more. Lupita reported that she couldn’t sleep well during filming, on location in Louisiana, particularly when she kept the wounds — elaborate make-up on her back — on overnight.
  • Lupita lost the Golden Globe to Lawrence but followed in her footsteps as a designer darling: She is a face of Miu Miu’s spring collection. Still, she said that the tumult of attention that comes with being a cover girl is overwhelming. “I think everything in my life has prepared me for this,” she said of playing Patsey, “and then nothing has prepared me for the red carpet.”

LOS ANGELES,

Lupita Nyong'o was giving a surprise birthday party for her best friend, Ben Kahn. She pulled out a tray of sweets — “vegan, gluten-free,” she noted — and organised a rendition of Happy Birthday as Kahn, 32, who has known her since their college days, grinned. He was being feted at a glittery, exclusive soiree here, surrounded by Hollywood luminaries.

That Lupita, the breakout star of 12 Years a Slave, had hours before won an award from the Screen Actors Guild for her supporting performance as Patsey, the tormented young slave in that Steve McQueen drama, did not seem to muddle the celebration.

She got teary in her televised acceptance speech, then sang and lit birthday candles at the after-party, still dressed in her turquoise Gucci gown.

A steady parade of actors-turned-fans, like Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey (they share a stylist) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson of Modern Family (he voted for her, he said) lined up to pose for photos and deliver kudos. In between, she and her 12 Years cast mate Benedict Cumberbatch danced to a Lionel Richie song.

It was another laurel for Lupita, who grew up in Kenya, lives in New York and has spent the last few months popping up on red carpets and at awards ceremonies, being lauded for her bold-hued style.

As one of the five best supporting actress Oscar nominees, Lupita is the most traditional ingénue — 84-year-old June Squibb, a star of Nebraska, is the unexpected one — and a front-runner for the prize. Her chief competition may be Jennifer Lawrence, a star of American Hustle and the reigning breakout salty-sweetheart.

A COMPLETE LIFE

12 Years a Slave is Lupita’s first feature film. In November, she was still coaching people on how to pronounce her name and cooing over meeting Oprah Winfrey. “She gave me a big hug, which was just sooo yummy,” she said at the Gotham Awards in December. “Basically, my life is complete now.”

By January, when she won best supporting actress at the Critics’ Choice Awards, the screaming photographers were on a first-name basis, and she and Winfrey were embracing like old chums. She has accumulated more than 128,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts photos of her starry exploits.

If Lupita, 30, has made a smooth transition to Hollywood acclaim, it’s perhaps because she’s had training. A 2012 graduate of the Yale School of Drama, she stepped into the role of Patsey, the slave obsessed over by Michael Fassbender’s sadistic plantation owner, with a deep understanding of the character.

“I was heartbroken by her story,” she said in a recent interview in New York. “I just felt so sorry for her. I recognised then that I had a lot of work to do to get to a point where I could play her, because feeling that kind of sympathy for someone is no way to actually inhabit them.”

Lupita’s performance began with a multi-step audition. After putting herself on tape, she met the casting director, Francine Maisler, who put her through the ringer. “She had me do my audition on my knees,” she remembered.

The director, McQueen, said he knew soon after meeting her that she was right for the part. “There’s only one word that can actually describe Lupita,” he said. “Grace.”

In her audition, McQueen counselled Lupita that, despite her suicidal suffering, Patsey is not noble. “That was something that he repeated, and I repeated to myself thereafter,” she said. “She was just simple, and she was just trying to get by on a daily basis. She’s not sentimental about her pain.” To play that, Lupita added, “I had to have the same kind of attitude.”

That attitude was challenged by scenes in which Patsey is brutally raped, whipped and more. Lupita reported that she couldn’t sleep well during filming, on location in Louisiana, particularly when she kept the wounds — elaborate make-up on her back — on overnight.

“They were haunting,” she said. “I could only sleep on my belly. I was just so aware of them the whole night. I just remember fretting and weeping, and then it occurred to me that my discomfort was temporary, and the woman who I was playing... her discomfort was permanent. It just really centred me, and it really quieted my soul for the next day’s work.”

Her dedication was rewarded with accolades from critics, industry groups and peers. After she was nominated for a Golden Globe, the Yale professor who taught her the movement skills of the Alexander Technique e-mailed.

COMFORTABLE IN MY SKIN

“She was like, ‘Your use in the film was great, and you’ve come a long way,’” Lupita recounted. “And those things mean so much to me, because those people have been so instrumental to me as an actor.”

Lupita lost the Golden Globe to Lawrence but followed in her footsteps as a designer darling: She is a face of Miu Miu’s spring collection. Still, she said that the tumult of attention that comes with being a cover girl is overwhelming. “I think everything in my life has prepared me for this,” she said of playing Patsey, “and then nothing has prepared me for the red carpet.”

As she adjusts to the refracting gleam of the spotlight — her next project is a big studio thriller, Non-Stop, with Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore and Dockery — Lupita is relying on her background, especially her Yale training, to help her find her footing.

“Now, I feel more comfortable in my own skin, and I think that’s very helpful when you’re in these out-of-body experiences,” she said. “I can remember to look for gravity and just remember that gravity is my friend” — she laughed — “when nothing else is.”

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GRACEFUL EVEN IN SUCCESS

Unlike other Oscar hopefuls on the circuit, Lupita admits that she has prepared remarks.

“I think about it,” she said at the Screen Actors Guild after-party. “You have a one-in-five chance” of winning, she added, and besides, she wanted to do right in her gratitude.

Those speeches have been a study in graciousness — emotional (she cries easily), thoughtful (at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, she thanked the film’s screenwriter, costume designer and makeup artist by name, details noted by Academy voters, especially those in the below-the-line craft ranks) and personal.

And Lupita has been careful to recognise the real Solomon Northup, who wrote the memoir on which the film is based, and whom she saluted for telling a difficult story well.

“Being a part of 12 Years a Slave has been one of the most profound experiences of my life,” she said at the Critics’ Choice ceremony. Like others involved with a movie that many feared would repel audiences, Lupita said most of the reward came in the reaction to it. “The film is touching people in ways that I never imagined,” she said in the interview.