It is possible that if she goes to the cinema by December, she will end up watching a movie starring Zendaya. The 29-year-old American actress has released, just this year, the finale of the series Euphoria; in May, The Drama, this Saturday The Odyssey, on July 29 the new installment of Spider-Man, and in December, the third part of Dune. Her calendar is filling up while, before turning 30, she has managed to make Disney the platform that has turned her into an auteur film actress, franchise face, producer, fashion icon, or simply a woman who finds in each cinematic role an opportunity to challenge herself and consolidate her place in the industry.
Read more Extreme heat scorches health: more irritability, worse sleep, and more cardiovascular imbalances
The headline for the first part of Zendaya’s life could be something like: from Disney child to global star. A narrative arc too overused to fit a career that, consciously and autonomously, the actress has built with tools and collaborators that escape the logics that have marked child prodigies. She once said her goal was to be a mix of Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, and Shonda Rhimes.
That woman now appears in a winged dress at the premiere of The Odyssey in New York and manages to look like the protagonist of a movie in which she barely appears, directed by Christopher Nolan, shot in IMAX, nearly three hours long, with a budget of 250 million dollars. She comes from a mixed-race family in Oakland, California; because of her height, she thought she would dedicate herself to sports, but her mother’s work in theater and the series Hannah Montana set her on a different path. “My father left his job as a teacher to make my dream possible. My mother stayed in Oakland because she had two jobs, teaching and working nights at the California Shakespeare Theater. Those jobs paid for all our round trips during the year I was auditioning in Los Angeles,” the actress, who started working at 13 in 2010 on the Disney series Shake It Up, has said.
From that day on, she chained children’s and youth series until 2017, when she started in the Spider-Man saga and The Greatest Showman, by filmmaker Michael Gracey. She combined her leap to cinema with her last Disney series, K.C. Undercover, in which she also acted as a producer and among her demands was that part of the cast, specifically her family, be racialized. “There are other things a girl can be besides a singer and dancer. I wanted K.C. to be a brainiac. So that children, not just girls, would watch the series and dream of being like her,” the actress explained in an interview with Vogue.
She was 18 and confronted Disney. That same year, she appeared at the Oscars with dreadlocks, and a U.S. television presenter criticized the hairstyle saying it “smelled like patchouli and marijuana.” Zendaya responded through a statement published on Instagram and Twitter, her natural communication channels: “It is a shockingly offensive stereotype,” and added, “there is already enough criticism of African American hair in society without ignorant people judging others by their hair texture.” Mattel released a Barbie doll inspired by that look, dreadlocks included, and she hadn’t even filmed a single movie yet.
“That’s how change happens,” the actress acknowledged over time. Her stylist Law Roach even placed the response about her hair at a historical level by stating, in 2024, that it gave rise to the Crown Act (the law that prohibits discrimination based on afro hairstyles in the U.S. since 2019). “It changed the way black people’s hair was accepted in schools and at work,” Roach said.
That same year, she criticized a magazine for using Photoshop “to change the body of a 19-year-old girl,” and published the original photos from that session also on her social media. Zendaya is not a megaphone for certain causes; in fact, she rejects the activist label. “It’s a lifestyle, causes you dedicate your life to, and I don’t deserve that title. I’m just a person with a heart trying to do things as best as possible,” she told InStyle magazine. Her imprint is in everyday life that generates an impact different from public demonstrations at award shows; for example, she uses her social media profiles to raise awareness about mental health.
In 2019, Zendaya managed to shed the Disney label when the first season of the series Euphoria premiered. “There was something I couldn’t get out of my head. She had vulnerability at certain moments, and then real toughness,” said Sam Levinson, the series director. The actress was still with Disney, participating in the dance reality show Dancing with the Stars, so the character of Rue Bennett, a teenager from a U.S. suburb addicted to drugs, didn’t seem part of the prescribed script for the actress. Despite her team’s reluctance, she read the script and accepted. “I had many fears, even before knowing this script existed, about what I was going to do next and what I was looking for. I had all these ideas in my head about what the next step should be, and there was nothing I felt connected to… everything just wasn’t right,” she declared then.
At just 22 years old, she was already at that crossroads: to leave or continue with her Disney life. Euphoria premiered on HBO in June 2019, co-produced by A24, and the role of Rue gave Zendaya her first Emmy nomination. She won and became the youngest winner in that category. “Colossal” has been the adjective that has followed her since then in many of her performances. A critical validation that came from a role in which not even the glitter makeup of the first two seasons managed to steer it towards frivolity.
Read more Fire Island, the hottest beach in the world: 100 years of art, parties, and unrestrained sex
Fame with a hoodie
Zendaya was already a respected actress and, apparently, all she needed was to wear a hoodie. Therefore, if her career is measured strictly in viral terms, each of her appearances on a red carpet generates a response of such impact that the immediate conclusion is simple: Zendaya has achieved that star category. Thanks to her alliance with stylist Law Roach, whom she pulled out of a second-hand clothing store when she was 14, they have made the so-called method dressing (using styles that underline, leaving no room for interpretation, the theme of the movie or series being promoted) part of her most recognizable brand.
For The Odyssey, she took from the Schiaparelli runway a sculptural dress with LED lights, an archive piece by Alexander McQueen crowned with a Philipp Tracey mask that matched the Eiffel Tower behind her, as well as a winged suit that the coveted house Matières Fécales has kept in the closet for the actress and her stylist for over a year.
The capacity of this artistic duo for narrative marketing, image building, and mastery of the digital cycle is a value that any mastermind behind the promotion strategy of a cultural product desires. Everything has to be an event, even if its imprint in memory is limited to the half hour the walk on the carpets lasts and its consequent temporal journey through social media.
Thus, through fashion, she has also gained some independence in Hollywood, being present in different fields — you have to be, one of the dogmas of these times — and consolidating herself as a fashion reference.
When the analysis focuses on her audiovisual career, the questions branch out. Is Zendaya capable of carrying a movie or series alone in terms of box office and acting? Or are the so-called franchises with an already consolidated IP doing that work for her? The box office figures of the Spider-Man and Dune sagas, and those expected from The Odyssey, with a budget of 250 million dollars, are misleading if compared to the tickets sold with Malcolm & Marie (there is hardly any record because it premiered during the pandemic); Rivals (2024), by Luca Guadagnino, grossed over 95 million dollars, according to Box Office Mojo; and The Drama has surpassed 132 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Her foray into what can be considered more auteur cinema — there is little independent left these days — is progressing and not always about ensemble films where other cast members help carry part of the weight. Nevertheless, the massive cult of Zendaya has earned her a fortune estimated at 40 million dollars, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
She now announces a break. Although she has been navigating public exposure since childhood, she keeps repeating: “That is a part of this career that terrifies me.” She defines herself as shy and introverted. She talks about her family as her reference, shares anecdotes about her nephews, while having built a tough perimeter of secrecy around her personal life. She has married Tom Holland, actor and co-star in several of her films. The public knows because he has slipped the phrase “my wife” in several interviews. There is no further trace in their statements, although their relationship is an inevitable component of public conversation. And despite AI’s insistence on releasing all kinds of fake images of their wedding, including one where all the actors who have worn the Spider-Man hood accompany the couple.
She is leaving, she says these days promoting The Odyssey, to “do nothing, take care of my own things.” “This job is sometimes a whirlwind, you change cities every second, your brain tries to be everywhere… I’m very grateful, I wouldn’t change anything, but sometimes you have to disappear for a while,” she explained. She will do so at the end of the year, when the third part of Dune premieres. She will say goodbye leaving a trail of dozens of images of her ad hoc styles crossing social media so that upon her return some of the viral dust allows her to take a new step in her career.
Read more Check-in at 3 PM, check-out before 12 PM: why people are arriving later and leaving hotels earlier
View this post on Instagram
