They just don’t make Hollywood stars like they used to.

Back in cinema’s golden era—before influencers flooded the feed, actresses weren’t just performers; they were icons. They dominated magazine covers, fueled public fascination, and sparked the kind of buzz we now reserve for pop stars. Who is she wearing? Who is she dating? And how early can we get tickets to her next film? That kind of magnetic pull is rare today. Few can blur the lines between “it girl” and “leading lady” — you know, walking the Met Gala carpet with the same “je ne quois” they bring to the silver screen. The truth is, there just aren’t many stars out there that are ls effortlessly cool, impossibly stylish, and undeniably real—even when draped in head-to-toe couture. Zendaya, however, is the exception to this rule.

This weekend, she’s nominted for Best Actress at the 2025 BET Awards — a celebration of her captivating performances in films like Challengers, where she plays the formidable tennis star Tashi Duncan, the mythical series Dune where she stars as fierce, desert-dweller Chani, and (of course) the HBO series Euphoria where she’s already picked up Emmys and a Golden Globe for her role as the troubled yet impassioned high schooler Rue Bennett.

Somehow, while gracing our screens, she’s still found time to evolve into an all-around fashion siren, picking up the CFDA Fashion Icon Award for the show-stopping looks she brings to fashion show front rows, industry red carpets, and luxury fashion photo shoots. Picking up trophies is a habit for Zendaya, who has been scooping them up since she picked up her first win for Best Style at the 2014 Radio Disney Awards. And, she’ll always be remembered for being the youngest two-time winner for acting in Emmy’s history and the first Black woman to win the Emmy for lead actress in a drama series (twice). Still, there are a ton of famous actresses who have still not quite reached household name status, so how has Zendaya made it to the one name only, upper-echelon of celebrity? It all started in Oakland, California.

Born Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman, the now 28-year-old star was born in the Bay Area and started her acting and modeling career long before she got her first break on the Disney Channel show Shake It Up in 2010. She played Rocky Blue, a quirky, talented dancer who, along with her best friend, was balancing life as a kid while moonlighting on a professional dance show. In 2015, she starred in another Disney original called KC Undercover but this time around she had more independence to guide the direction of the role. Though early Disney affiliation has proven fertile ground for stars like Miley Cyrus and Sabrina Carpenter, being a child star has also historically spelled trouble when it comes to building a serious and sustainable career as an adult. Despite that, Zendaya has not only continued to break that stereotype while also embracing her time at the channel. When fellow actress Carey Mulligan spoke to Zendaya for Variety’s Actors on Actors, she dug into her time as a young actress, saying: “You surely can’t think of yourself as a Disney kid now,” pointing to her role as a drugged out partier in Euphoria or her run as MJ in the blockbuster Spiderman franchise. Zendaya responded, “The thing is, I am. And to a degree, I am grateful for that. That’s where I started, and I learned so much from that experience. It’s just kind of been this slow progression, and I am happy that it’s all been to prove it to myself and not to anybody else, you know? I embrace it a little bit. It’s part of my heritage, to a degree.”

But how does an actress go from Disney star to blockbuster royalty and indie darling (let’s not forget her role in the monochromatic 2021 film Malcom & Marie)? The answer is simple: risk. It’s the same magnetic draw she had wearing a Mugler Cutout robot body suit on the red carpet for Dune: Part Two (shout-out to her collaborator and stylist Law Roach who has been like a style dula to the birth of her fashion evolution), it’s the same confidence that allowed her to take on the role of a strung-out main character after only playing roles where she embodied a funny, charismatic good girl attitude. It’s the same self-knowing that gave her the conviction to play the complicated, fiery role of a love triangle riddled, sport-obsessed, puppet master in Challengers.

With plans to star in another Spider-Man blockbuster in 2026 alongside her fiancé Tom Holland (and rocking a massive … 5 carat rock at the Golden Globes as an announcement, it doesn’t get more Hollywood than that), receiving the late Ronnie Spector’s blessing to portray her in a biopic, and taking on the role of Athena in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, it’s clear that Zendaya’s star is only rising. Her well-deserved recognition as one of the industry’s Best Actress at this weekend’s BET Awards is just another step in a career defined by talent and versatility. And when she inevitably accepts that same distinction from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences someday, we’ll just be proud to say we knew her when. In the era of internet celebrities and TikTok influencers, we deserve a real, talented, fashion-forward actress, and lucky for us, we have Zendaya.