- Born
- Birth nameNora Lum
- Height5′ 1″ (1.55 m)
- Nora Lum, known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress and rapper. She has played supporting roles in the comedy films Ocean's 8 and Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and her leading role in the comedy-drama The Farewell (2019) earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress nomination.
She has released two albums, Yellow Ranger (2014) and In Fina We Trust (2018). She has also ventured into comedy and hosting, making television appearances in Girl Code, Future Man, and Saturday Night Live.
Lum was born in New York City to painter and South Korean immigrant Tia, who died when she was four, and Chinese-American father Wally. She grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, raised by her father and his grandparents; she became especially close to her grandmother. One of her paternal great-grandfathers was a Chinese immigrant in the 1940s; he opened the Cantonese restaurant Lum's in Flushing, Queens that was one of that neighborhood's first Chinese restaurants.
Lum attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts where she played the trumpet and was trained in classical music and jazz. At age 16, she adopted the stage name Awkwafina, "definitely a person I repressed" and an alter ego to her "quiet and more passive" personality during her college years. Lum majored in journalism and women's studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. From 2006 to 2008, Lum attended Beijing Language and Culture University in China, where she studied Mandarin.
Lum states that Charles Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, Tom Waits, and Chet Baker were early influences. Prior to her career in entertainment, she was an intern at local New York publications Gotham Gazette and the Times Union newspaper in Albany, and was a publicity assistant for publishing house Rodale.- IMDb mini biography by: ahmetkozan
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsWally LumTia
- RelativesGum Fang "Jimmy" Lum(Great Grandparent)Hong Yun-chun(Grandparent)Kim Sang(Grandparent)
- Low, raspy voice.
- Is of Korean & Chinese descent.
- Graduated from the State University of New York at Albany (2011).
- Graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School (2006).
- American actress, rapper & comedian.
- Born to a mother from Korea, and a father from China.
- I'm OK with having an Asian aspect if it's done in a genuine way. I'm not OK with someone writing the Asian experience for an Asian character. Like, that's annoying and I make it very clear, I don't ever go out for auditions where I feel like I'm making a minstrel out of our people.
- Pretending to be a rich person is probably the hardest acting I've ever had to do. Crazy Rich Asians teaches audiences that that world doesn't end in Beverly Hills. It's even more extravagant out there. When you're in Singapore, you feel this air of opulence everywhere. I really wish I was as rich as (my character) Peik Lin.
- When you're playing a live-action character, you're confined to that dimensionality. But playing something as big as Sisu, you're given the ability to go into that skin; there were a lot of points when I felt 'big'. Hopefully not a couple of tonnes heavy and powerful and could do things I couldn't do as a human. It was a powerful feeling.
- [on how she got her stage name] I was looking for a pretty stupid name, I just thought it was a funny name. And it was fitting that it had 'awkward' in it, because I am awkward.
- [After being told that the film Crazy Rich Asians is the first American produced film to feature a cast consisting of Asian American actors since The Joy Luck Club] That's a full adult life since Asian-Americans received adequate representation [onscreen], it's just crazy.
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