Zendaya was around 13 years old when she decided she wanted to be an actress.
Her family didn’t think twice. Her father, Kazembe Ajamu Coleman, left his job as a teacher and moved with her to Los Angeles to accompany her to every audition and help her build a career from scratch. “My dad left his teaching job to make it happen”, she recalled.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, her mother, Claire Stoermer, held up the other end of the rope. She was a teacher by day and worked at the California Shakespeare Theater at night. Those two jobs helped pay for the trips between Oakland and Los Angeles during the year of auditions.
Today, Zendaya has Emmy Awards and a career that also includes work as a producer. Some estimates put her fortune at around 40 million dollars, though that figure isn’t official.
But it all started with a family split between two cities. ✨
