Lupita Nyong’o delivered an emotional speech Thursday while accepting her honor for best breakout performance at Essence magazine’s seventh annual Women in Hollywood luncheon. The 12 Years a Slave star and Oscar nominee for best supporting actress confessed that as a young girl, she had wished her dark-hued skin would become lighter. “I got teased and taunted about my skin,” Nyong’o, 30, began, on stage in a ballroom at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “My one prayer to God was that I would wake up lighter skinned. The morning would come, and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of the mirror because I wanted to see my face first. Every day I would feel the disappointment of being just as dark as the day before.” Nyong’o said she tried to bargain with God by vowing to stop eating sugar cubes and to never lose her school sweater again if she could only see a change in her skin tone. It wasn’t until she discovered Sudanese British supermodel Alek Wek that she began to believe in her own beauty. “She was dark as night and was in all the magazines and on runways,” Nyong’o said. “My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome. I couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman who looked so much like me as beautiful. It was perplexing, and I wanted to reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside of me.” Nyong’o said she would also like to inspire young women. “I hope that my presence on your screen and my face in magazines may lead you, young girls, on a beautiful journey,” she said.

To the world, she’s a humanitarian, superstar actress and half of Hollywood’s most glamorous couple. But to the workers who met Angelina Jolie on Thursday at Oscar rehearsals, she was just “Angie.” The38-year-old Oscar winner, who was honored with the film academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award last year, came to the Dolby Theatre to run through the lines she’ll say in front of millions on Sunday. Afterward, she hung around chatting to show producers and introduced herself as “Angie” to a group of college students serving as trophy carriers this year. “You’ll help make the night a fun night,” she said warmly to the star-struck students.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/01/2014