Zendaya was just 13 when she landed a leading role in the Disney Channel original series Shake It Up.
The now-Emmy Award-winning actor starred alongside Bella Thorne in the hit teen sitcom, which premiered in 2010.
Zendaya ultimately went on to bag several other leading roles at Disney, including in the series K.C. Undercover and the film Frenemies.
But of course, things took a massive turn for the star once she landed a role in her first feature film, Spider-Man: Homecoming, in 2017.
Zendaya portrayed Michelle "MJ" Jones-Watson in the Marvel film alongside leading actor Tom Holland, whom she began dating in 2021.
And ever since, Zendaya's acting career has gone from strength to strength. She starred alongside Zac Efron in The Greatest Showman later in 2017, landed the leading role in the hit HBO series Euphoria in 2019, and appeared in Denis Villeneuve's Dune in 2021.
Over the years, Zendaya has credited her parents — who worked as teachers — with helping her achieve such tremendous success.
In 2021, Zendaya's mom, Claire Stoermer, appeared on Tina Knowles's Talks with Mama Tina, where she recalled picking up extra work so that Zendaya could get her first taste of acting at a summer conservatory program.
In fact, a resurfaced clip of the heartwarming conversation went viral on X this week, garnering almost 500,000 views.
"I was basically like, 'I want to do this,' and my dad quit his job as a teacher to make it happen," Zendaya shared in 2017. "My mom stayed in Oakland because she had two jobs: teaching and working at the California Shakespeare Theater at night. Those two jobs paid for all of our car trips back and forth for the year I was auditioning. Luckily, I had parents who were like, 'You know what? We believe in you.' I got my first job on the Disney Channel when I was 13, and it was just me and my dad in an apartment in downtown LA."
Looking back on her upbringing in 2016, Zendaya told Ellen DeGeneres, "I gotta give it to my parents. I'm really lucky to have the parents that I have. They just have always instilled in me those core values that I think I have to carry with me through everything. I give it up to them, I give it up to my family."
Now, Zendaya is opening up about the reality of being her family's "breadwinner" at such a young age.
Sitting down with British Vogue ahead of the release of her new film Challengers, Zendaya admitted she has "complicated feelings" about child stardom.
"I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being in the public eye, or being a child actor," she said.
"We've seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental... And I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, 'Oh, OK, wait a minute: I've only ever done what I've known, and this is all I've known,'" she continued.
"I'm almost going through my angsty teenager phase now because I didn't really have the time to do it before. I felt like I was thrust into a very adult position: I was becoming the breadwinner of my family very early, and there was a lot of role-reversal happening, and just kind of becoming grown, really," she said.
As a result of this, Zendaya went on to note that she sometimes feels as though she "can't enjoy" pivotal moments of her career.
"Now, when I have these moments in my career — like, my first time leading a film that's actually going to be in a theater — I feel like I shrink, and I can't enjoy all the things that are happening to me, because I'm...very tense," she shared.
"I think that I carry that from being a kid and never really having an opportunity to just try shit. And I wish I went to school," she added.