Zendaya Biography

Zendaya is the one-named star who turned her beginnings as a Disney Channel actress into success as a pop singer, social media juggernaut, and Emmy-winning dramatic actress.

She was born Zendaya Coleman in Oakland, California, where her mother worked for the California Shakespeare Theater.  Zendaya was briefly a child model before landing a role as teen dancer Rocky Blue on the Disney Channel show Shake It Up.  The show launched in 2010, and by the time it ended in 2013, Zendaya had become one of Disney’s signature stars. That year she appeared as the youngest contestant ever on Dancing With the Stars, then spent three more years (2015-18) on the Disney Channel as the title star of K.C. Undercover, playing a high school math whiz who was also a secret agent.

In 2017 she made a big splash as Michelle, love interest to Spider-Man (played by Tom Holland), in the Marvel movie Spider-Man: Homecoming. She played Michelle again in the sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). Her other films include The Greatest Showman (2017, with Hugh Jackman as P.T Barnum) and the drama Malcolm and Marie (2021). In 2021 she also voiced Lola Bunny in Space Jam: A New Legacy, and played Chani, the mysterious desert woman of Timothée Chalamet‘s dreams in Dune.

On television, she won an Emmy Award as the year’s outstanding lead actress in a drama series for her portrayal of Rue Bennett, a struggling teenage drug addict, on the HBO drama Euphoria. In music she has released successful singles and the 2013 pop and R&B album Zendaya. With Zac Efron she had a hit with the single “Rewrite the Stars” from the soundtrack album to The Greatest Showman.