Zendaya Said She Was the "Breadwinner" of Her Family as a Child

It's hard to remember a time when Zendaya wasn't a permanent staple in pop culture and a fashion icon, but nearly 14 years ago, the actress got her start on the 2010 Disney Channel show Shake It Up. Now, Zendaya is joining in on the child actor discussion by reflecting on her early days of fame and working at just 14 years old.

"I don’t know how much of a choice I had," she told Vogue in a May cover story timed to her upcoming film Challengers, coming out Apr. 26. "I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being in the public eye, or being a child actor."

"We’ve seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental," she said. "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."

Starting at such a young age and providing for her family made the actress grow up very quickly.

"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 explained. She added that in this current stage of her life, she feels like she's "almost going through my angsty teenager phase now, because I didn’t really have the time to do it before."

Zendaya is currently promoting her highly anticipated tennis film, in which she stars alongside Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor. While her red carpet tour has been filled with nothing but serve after serve, Zendaya explained that the need to be "perfect" and "live up to all these expectations" during her childhood has created some self doubt in her now as she prepares for her big movie to hit theaters.

“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,“ she said. "I’m very tense, and 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.

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