Before the Emmys, before Euphoria, before the two Vogue covers, there was a girl from Oakland, California, in a yellow jersey and knee-high socks, running after a ball.
Zendaya Coleman tried basketball because her parents loved the sport, then soccer, and she also ran track during elementary school.
At age 6, she changed direction: theater, hula, and hip hop. That turn led her to move to Los Angeles with her father, Kazembe Ajamu Coleman, to work at Disney.
Today, at 27 years old and with 184 million followers, she admits something no one would imagine upon seeing this photo: “I’m always in some high school acting, and I never went to high school”.
She became her family’s breadwinner while still just a child. “I wish I had gone to school”, she confessed to Vogue.