Zendaya The Great

Secret tomboy? Absolutely fearless? This is the Disney star as you never knew her.

With her Insta-millions and her squeaky-clean Disney persona, Zendaya has become one of the world’s most influential stars. As an idol of this generation, it ’s fitting that she is probably the only young celeb that goes by a mononym.

From acting as a child to growing up in the limelight, it seems that everything has come easy; her only insecurity, she revealed, was about being so “long and lanky”. “I ’m skinny, you know, like a string bean kind of effect, but I ’ve learned to love that. Being long and lanky comes in handy when you are trying to reach stuff that is high,” she joked.

In fact, things have been the complete opposite throughout her career. Just by virtue of being a child star, she was type casted. And breaking through those barriers was exactly what she set out to do. “The thing is with being a Disney artist , you have to work ten times harder and make quality music and things like that, just to get people to take you seriously. From a child star to getting into the adult world, you got to work a little bit harder and that ’s fine, I don’t mind doing the work.” She has spoken about not letting people tear her down, saying, “The only way to do that is to build yourself up so that you create a strength that can’t be broken. That ’s gonna take a while.”

Proving that she’s more than an all-singing, all-dancing child star, Zendaya has also released her own clothing line, Daya by Zendaya. Time for a Zendaya revolution? Here, she speaks about her “artist image”, her secret tomboy side, and about not letting fear get in the way.

It ’s said that you have become one of Hollywood’s most influential stars. How do you feel about that?