Lupita Nyong'o graces the December cover of Glamour magazine for its annual Women of the Year issue, and the Oscar winner opens up about missing her anonymity, how Oprah Winfrey has changed her, and all the new responsibility she feels she has since being in the public eye.
"I've had somebody say, 'I want you at my wedding, but I don't want you to pull focus, so wear jeans!'" she explained when asked how fame has affected her personal life.
"Losing my anonymity is something that's proving to be very challenging. It's good for your soul to walk around unnoticed; there's so much you can't do when everybody knows who you are. And so I miss those little things."
The 12 Years a Slave showstopper also admitted that Oprah helped her come into her own after winning an Academy Award for her gut-wrenching performance earlier this year.
"Oprah played a big role in my understanding of what it meant to be female and to really step into your own power," Nyong'o shared.
"I wouldn't even call her a role model; she was literally a reference point. You have the dictionary, you have the Bible, you have Oprah."
And when asked about the pressure to fit in with society's beauty ideals, the 31-year-old told the mag that "European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world."
"This is the message: that dark skin is unacceptable. I definitely wasn't hearing this from my immediate family—my mother never said anything to that effect—but the voices from the television are usually much louder than the voices of your parents," Nyong'o answered.
"I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. Beautiful people have many advantages, but so do friendly people....I think beauty is an expression of love. There's room in this world for beauty to be diverse."