Lupita Nyong’o glides into the restaurant at our appointed time, the picture of cool in a blue charmeuse jumpsuit with a camel-colored rain jacket draped over her arm. If diners are aware a star is among us, they don’t betray it. After briefly casting about for a different table, then deciding the one we’ve got will do, she jumps directly, wholeheartedly, into the interview, clothes first.

“The gesture of my style is definitely my mom. I always thought she was very elegant, and she was always present with the way she put herself together without being precious,” says Nyong’o, citing her mother’s ritual home manicure every Sunday night while the family watched television together. But she also looked up to her Aunt Amondi, her mother’s sister, whose style tacked in the opposite direction: black leather jackets, a mohawk at one point, even the motorcycle to complete the look. “I kind of oscillated between the two. I find I love the elegant, the classic, the simple, but I also like the outrageous and the quirky and the almost accidental.”

Photograph by Jackie Nickerson; Styled by Samira Nasr.

Nyong’o could almost be describing her career, except for the accidental part. The year started with the premiere of Little Monsters, a comedic Australian-American-British zombie flick, went right into the smash success of Jordan Peele’s horror drama Us, in which she plays heroine Adelaide Wilson and her demonic doppelgänger Red, and will close out after she reprises her role as CGI alien Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. In between, the Oscar winner will publish a children’s book, Sulwe, and she’s thisclose to starting shoots on a television series based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, which she is producing, with her Black Panther costar Danai Gurira writing the script. So, Nyong’o radiates the energy of a girl next door, especially as she recalls how she role-modeled early fashion choices, but she also happens to be one of the most powerful Black women in film.

Though her family is from Kenya’s Luo tribe, Lupita Amondi Nyong’o was born in Mexico City in 1983. Her first name is derived from the name Guadalupe. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, now a prominent Kenyan politician, and mother, Dorothy Ogada Nyong’o, had immigrated to Mexico shortly after Charles Nyong’o, her father’s brother, was disappeared in 1980. Charles was never found; he was likely a target because of his opposition to the Moi presidency. The childhoods of Nyong’o and her five siblings would be marked by political pressures. They had to share their father with the rest of the community for the good of the fight, and lived in fear for his safety, particularly after the family returned to Kenya in 1984.