Jevon Phillips of the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Lupita Nyong’o won the Screen Actors Guild award for female actor in a supporting role Saturday night for her role as Patsey, a favored but abused slave in Steve McQueen‘s “12 Years a Slave.”
It was the first nomination for the Mexico City-born, Kenyan-raised actress. Nyong’o was three weeks shy of graduating from the Yale School of Drama when she was cast by McQueen in her breakout role.
Nyong’o defeated Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the unstable wife of a con artist in “American Hustle”; Julia Roberts as the daughter of a domineering matriarch in “August: Osage County”; June Squibb as the reluctantly supportive wife in “Nebraska”; and Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines, the wife of a presidential butler, in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”
