In 2013, Lupita Nyong’o’s breakout role as Patsey, a slave on a cotton plantation in 12 Years a Slave, firmly cemented her status as a rising star in Hollywood. Still fresh out of Yale’s School of Drama, Nyong’o found herself saddled with a huge weight of expectation; something she initially struggled to come to terms with, until she learnt that she alone has the power to define the course of her career.

“Different people would say, ‘This is your moment, this is your moment,’” she told AnOther. “That was kind of perplexing. What does that mean? What does that mean in actual practice? I had to really sit with myself and figure out what I wanted my life to look like. There was the expectation that, when your career explodes, the world is at your feet, you can have anything you want — that’s the Cinderella version of it. Then there are the real questions — What do I have an appetite for now? What does success look like to me? Now that I’ve achieved all this, what does failure look like? I really needed to define those three things, not on the world’s terms but for myself.

“For me, success equals longevity, success equals the luxury of choice. Even when I was in school, they were always preparing us for whatever came our way. We were not honing our skills at choosing what we wanted to act in, we were honing our skills at making a meal out of whatever little got thrown at us. So, if you were playing cop number three you could still find the joy, the life, humanity in that, because it is expected that it is a long road to roles of substance in the industry. They’re not really training you for instant success and choice. That’s what the accolades that came with 12 Years gave me — they afforded me a choice.”

Careers advice: 12 remarkable women on the career moments that changed their lives