January 3, 2025: Zendaya is a “very self-conscious person”.

The 28-year-old actress has admitted to being “very self-critical” in her day-to-day life – but Zendaya feels she can always be “super free” on a film or TV set.

She told The Hollywood Reporter: “I’m a very self-conscious person. Everything I do, I’m very self-critical. And I find that being on a set is one of the few places that I don’t judge myself.

“I can just be super free. Because I’m like, ‘Wait, it’s not me.’ So I don’t mind watching myself. I don’t actually ever get weird about it until I go, ‘Oh, people are going to see this.’

“Once it’s time to promote something, I’m like, ‘Oh, now I’m self-conscious about the work that I just made.’ But up until this point, I was just in my little bubble of creative freedom. It’s not until you realise, ‘This won’t belong to just me forever,’ that my head starts going.”

Zendaya starred alongside Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist in ‘Challengers’, the romantic sports drama film, in 2024. And the Hollywood star now views the movie as a turning point in her acting career.

She said: “For so long I was playing a teenager, way past when I was one.

“Being able to play Rue [on ‘Euphoria’] has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. But there comes a time where you’ve got to start playing your own age and beyond. And it was a scary thing.

“‘Challengers’ was my first time in a leading lady role and being a part of the producing aspect. It was all very exciting and also daunting. But when you read certain characters, you’re like, ‘I just can’t pass up the opportunity to play this woman’.

“She was refreshing to me. She doesn’t apologise for her need for control as her life is falling apart or for vicariously having to live through other people.”