Nora Lum (born June 2, 1988), known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress, rapper, and comedian who rose to prominence in 2012 when her rap song "My Vag" became popular on YouTube. She then released her debut album, Yellow Ranger (2014), and appeared on the MTV comedy series Girl Code (2014–2015). Her second album, In Fina We Trust, was released in 2018. She played supporting roles in the comedy films Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), Ocean's 8 (2018), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019).
Awkwafina played a leading role in the comedy-drama film The Farewell (2019), for which she received critical acclaim and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical, becoming the first woman of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe in any lead actress film category, and additionally won the Satellite Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress.
Awkwafina is co-creator, writer, and executive producer of the Comedy Central series Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens (2020–present), in which she stars as a fictionalized version of herself. She then appeared in Swan Song (2021), voiced Courtney in The Angry Birds Movie 2, Sisu in Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) and Ms. Tarantula in The Bad Guys (2022), and portrayed Katy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superhero film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).
Early life
Awkwafina was born in Stony Brook, Long Island, New York, to a Chinese American father and a Korean American mother. Her father, Wally, worked in the information technology field, and comes from a family of restaurateurs – his father immigrated to the United States in the 1940s, and opened the Cantonese restaurant Lum's in Flushing, Queens, one of the neighborhood's first Chinese restaurants. Her mother, Tia, was a painter who immigrated with her family to the United States from South Korea in 1972. She died from pulmonary hypertension when Awkwafina was four, and Awkwafina was subsequently raised by her father and paternal grandparents, becoming especially close to her paternal grandmother.
Awkwafina grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, and attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, where she played the trumpet and was trained in classical music and jazz. At age 15, 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. From 2006 to 2008, she learned Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University to communicate with her paternal grandmother without barriers. She majored in journalism and women's studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York and graduated in 2011.
