04/18/2026
Zendaya, the 'It Girl next door' who still shops at her local Waitrose. But is she really as down to earth as she seems?
Every era has its stars. In the 1950s, those talents who made it, such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, remain household names. Today, given the plethora of social media influencers and reality TV stars, it takes far more to keep shining in such an overcrowded sky.
Zendaya is one of the few who have — a star who genuinely deserves the title. She has two Primetime Emmys, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award to prove it, as well as a slew of top-flight fashion brand ambassadorships, including multi-million dollar contracts with Bulgari and Louis Vuitton.
Like Marilyn and Elvis, the 27-year-old Californian-born actress, who boasts 184 million fans on Instagram alone, is now so famous that she goes only by one name.
On the stage since she was six, and the screen since 13, by rights she should now be hitting her stroppy rebellious phase, recovering from burnout or cultivating a reputation as an outrageous diva. Except she’s not.
She’s dominated the red carpet this month thanks to her new film Challengers. But when not at work, the 5ft 10in star is just as likely to be seen in jeans and bomber jacket, strolling the tinned goods aisle of the New Malden Waitrose in South-West London, close to where her boyfriend, Spider-Man actor Tom Holland, has a four-bedroom home.
Indeed Vogue has aptly named Zendaya ‘the It Girl next door’. As if to illustrate the paradox, while lauding her down-to-earth personality, the fashion bible has also granted her the hugely rare accolade of appearing on the cover of two Vogues simultaneously.
Last week, Zendaya was unveiled as the cover star on the May issues of American and British Vogue — just the second single cover star to feature on both, after Adele in 2021.
The U.S. cover, shot by famed photographer, Annie Liebowitz, sees her dressed in the finest Paris couture. The British version, shot by the lesser-known Carlijn Jacobs, has her in sportswear by UK designer Grace Wales Bonner.
The looks are diametrically opposed, highlighting Zendaya’s broad appeal. That she can embrace classic Hollywood glamour and Gen Z-friendly leisurewear with equal ease is the one of the key secrets behind her success.
Indeed, Zendaya has pulled off the rare feat of appealing both to 50-year-old women and teenage girls simultaneously. Gaining the respect of one demographic tends to mean repelling the other, but it’s testament to her unique skill set and talent that she commands the attention of both. This has not been lost on the fashion world, where luxury brands queue up to lock her into exclusive contracts.
Such is Zendaya’s power that, despite being paid a rumoured seven figures as a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton, she doesn’t wear the label exclusively. At this year’s Oscars, she wore a black and pink gown from Armani Prive, a brand she has no official links to.
And for the past few weeks on a global press tour promoting her forthcoming film, in addition to wearing Louis Vuitton, she has wowed fans in designs by Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Thom Browne and Loewe, successfully carrying off even the most avant-garde outfits. Like Margot Robbie, she’s a fan of ‘method dressing’, where an actor’s press tour outfits amplify the theme of their film.
Where Robbie wore pink to promote Barbie, Zendaya has worn a series of tennis-themed outfits, reflecting her role as a coach caught in a love triangle in Challengers, which has already been described by one reviewer as the ‘best tennis movie ever made’.
Or remember the silver Thierry Mugler robot suit worn to promote sci-fi film Dune II, a fashion moment that quickly went viral?
It helps, of course, that Zendaya is as tall, slim and beautiful as any supermodel. But of equal importance is her personality, and its appeal to those under 30, an elusive demographic with which luxury brands are desperate to engage.
Unlike many celebrities, Zendaya doesn’t shy away from talking about race and social injustice. ‘I’m grateful for my peers, but I would love to see more that look a little bit more like me around me,’ she tells Vogue in this month’s issue. ‘I think that is something that is crucial.’
Born on September 1, 1996 to an African-American father, Kazembe Ajamu Coleman, and a German/Scottish mother, Claire Stoermer — both teachers — Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman was raised in Oakland, California.
She is the youngest of five, all stepsiblings from her father’s previous marriage, who her mother says keep her grounded: ‘She has older brothers and sisters and they are completely in her life.
‘They check her. If she ever gets a big head, they’d say: “Are you kidding me? Sit down.” ’
Aged six, she performed in her first school play. Aged 13, she started modelling and dancing, before bagging her breakout acting role in 2009, as Rocky Blue in Disney Channel sitcom Shake It Up. Focusing briefly on a pop career, she released her first single in 2011 and her first album in 2013.
But it was four years later that she really punched through. As trapeze artist Anne Wheeler in the hit 2017 musical The Greatest Showman, she acted alongside Zac Efron, doing all of her own stunts.
In the same year, she made her debut as Peter Parker’s love interest,
MJ, in the box office mega-hit Spider-Man: Homecoming — becoming his love interest in real life when she fell for Tom Holland, who plays the Marvel star.
The two were first reported to be dating in 2017, but it wasn’t until July 2021 that they were spotted kissing. Despite fans’ obsessive interest, the couple always tried to keep their relationship as private as possible. Asked in a 2021 magazine interview whether they were a couple, Holland, also 27, sweetly said: ‘It’s not a conversation I can have without her.
‘I respect her too much to say. This isn’t my story. It’s our story. And we’ll talk about it when we’re ready to talk about it together.’
Maintaining a relationship for more than three years is no small feat in your 20s, but when you’re two of Hollywood’s hottest stars, it deserves Oscars all round.
‘Tomdaya’, as the internet has coined them, seem genuinely compatible, mutually supportive of each other’s careers, and as keen to live as ‘normal’ lives as they can, given their fame.
Last year, they were spotted goofing around in Hampton Court, posing for pictures with fans. Speaking to Vogue about Holland’s forthcoming London theatre stint in Romeo & Juliet, she says she ‘could not be more proud’.
In the latest issue of Vogue, she talks sweetly of watching Holland’s fame grow with that 2017 Spider-Man hit. ‘We were both very, very young, but my career was already kind of going, and his changed overnight . . . One day you’re a kid and you’re at the pub with your friends, and the next day you’re Spider-Man.
‘I definitely watched his life change in front of him. But he handled it beautifully,’ she said.
Since that auspicious first Spider-Man film, Zendaya has starred in two more films from the franchise (and is set to reprise the role in a future fourth instalment).
But it was as a drug-addicted 17-year-old in HBO’s dark but hugely successful series Euphoria, that she truly kissed goodbye to her squeaky clean Disney beginnings. The role won her a Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmys..
She went on to appear in science-fiction films Dune I and II, playing Chani alongside Timothee Chalamet.
While her success could easily have gone to her head, Zendaya appears far too grounded to be grand. She’s surprisingly down to earth for a calibre of celebrity who dropped her surname long ago. Madonna and Cher might request temperature-controlled dressing rooms and a phalanx of scented candles, but Zendaya has no truck with such status-affirming affectations.
See, too, her appearance on BBC’s The One Show last week. If the concept of a Hollywood megastar on an early evening magazine programme felt incongruous, Zendaya didn’t seem to notice, but chatted as though sitting on the BBC’s green sofa was the greatest honour imaginable.
‘She’d rather be at home, with her hair down and no make-up, with Noon [her miniature schnauzer], watching a movie,’ her longtime stylist, Law Roach, told Vogue.
It’s the sort of quote that every celebrity’s ‘close friend’ might give in a desperate attempt to make them seem ‘normal’ — but in Zendaya’s case, it paints a refreshingly accurate picture.
