Lupita Nyong'o Is People's 'Most Beautiful'! 4 Things You Didn't Know About Kenyan-Mexican Actress

Mexican-born Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o has had quite the year after winning the Oscar for best supporting actress in "12 Years a Slave" and now being honored with People's magazine "Most Beautiful Person for 2014."

By being named the most beautiful in People magazine's 25th annual issue, Nyong'o joins the ranks of Julia Roberts, Cindy Crawford, Beyonce, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Tom Cruise. This year's issues includes other celebrities including: Keri Russell, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Mindy Kaling, Pink, Amber Heard, Gabrielle Union, Molly Sims and Stacy Kiebler.

"I'm flattered, but flattered sounds like such a flighty word, you know? I'm flattered with, like, gravitas under it," said the 31-year-old actress to "Today's" Savannah Guthrie. "What an incredible journey to go from that feeling to being on the cover of this magazine. I mean, you could have never told me that that would happen when I was 16 and insecure about my complexion."

Nyong'o previously discussed her struggles with her complexion and "dark beauty" in February at Essence magazine’s annual Black Women in Hollywood luncheon, where she recalled being "teased and taunted for her night-shaded skin."

“I want to take this opportunity to talk about beauty, black beauty, dark beauty," said Nyong'o, while adding that she used to pray about waking up to lighter skin. "But around me the preference for light skin prevailed, to the beholders that I thought mattered I was still unbeautiful. And my mother again would say to me you can’t eat beauty, it doesn’t feed you and these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be. And what my mother meant when she said you can’t eat beauty was that you can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you."

Earlier this month, Nyong'o was unveiled as the new face of French beauty brand Maison Lancôme.

"Her instinctive and sophisticated talent and one of a kind beauty, both delicate and strength-exuding, has taken the world by storm," said Lancôme in a statement regarding their decision to make the 31-year-old actress their brand ambassadress, reported Daily Mail UK. "She is an outstanding example of a natural beauty; confident and simply true to herself, she embraces life with freshness, citing happiness as the most attractive form of radiance."