The Terrible Career Advice Lupita Nyong’o Got After Winning Her Oscar

Logo with 12 years of slavery (2013), first film as an actress, Lupita Nyong’o was nominated and won the Oscar in Best Supporting Actress and would need to carefully choose the next steps in HollywoodDuring this period, she received some very bad advice, but she rejected it and chose to listen to her own intuition.

During an interview with Peoplethe 41-year-old artist recalled how she emerged victorious from Oscar 2014 made her the subject of high expectations. “It definitely added pressure. It was my first film, and now I had been given what is considered the pinnacle of achievement as an actor,” she said. “So there I was, like, ‘Okay, what happens now? I can’t afford to fail.'”

Then, Nyong’o was asked what was the worst advice she ever received: “That I needed to seize the day and do something bigger. That the next thing after 12 years of slavery needed to be a lead role in a successful film.”

It wasn’t about the size of the paper, it was about the quality of the paper, at least for me.

Additionally, the actress recalled a conversation she had with Emma Thompson, something that “really set me on the right path,” according to Lupita Nyong’o.

“She said, ‘You have to live your life the way you feel is right. You have to listen to your own intuition.’ Even up until that point, there wasn’t a formula that I followed, so there didn’t have to be a formula moving forward,” he said.

She said, ‘You have to give yourself permission to fail.’ That was really good advice to hear at a time when everyone was saying, ‘Seize the day, you have to find the lead role, then you have to do this and that, and hit movies and all that.’

So, after scoring with 12 years of slavery, Nyong’o decided to step away from cinema for a while to star, in 2016, in a play in Broadwaycall Eclipsedwhich earned him a nomination for the Tony: “I listened to my intuition and went back to theater, which really saved me from imposter syndrome and fear of failure.”