Rachel Zegler

Rachel Anne Zegler is an American actress and singer. She was named after the fictional character Rachel Green from the TV show Friends. She made her film debut playing Maria Vasquez in the 2021 musical drama West Side Story, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. She was the first actress of Colombian descent to win the award and, at 20 years old, its youngest recipient.

Zegler was born in Hackensack and raised in Clifton, New Jersey. She then attended the Catholic all-girls college-preparatory Immaculate Conception High School. She graduated from high school on June 2, 2019.

Zegler began her career starring in several musicals while attending the Immaculate Conception High School, including playing Belle in Beauty and the Beast (2016), Ariel in The Little Mermaid (2017),[14] Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street (2018), and Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical (2019). For all four performances, she received Metro Award nominations in the Actress in a Leading Role category. Her other roles include Serena in Legally Blonde, Cosette in Les Misérables, and Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

In January 2018, director Steven Spielberg posted an open casting call via Twitter for a new film adaptation of West Side Story. Zegler responded to the casting call tweets with videos of herself singing "Tonight" and "I Feel Pretty"; she had performed the role at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in 2017. Zegler was selected from over 30,000 applicants for the role of Maria, marking her film debut. The film was released in December 2021, and earned acclaim from critics and audiences. For her performance, she received a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination for Best Young Performer and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.

Zegler will next star in the upcoming superhero film Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023) as Anthea. She will also be playing Snow White alongside Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen in a live-action film adaptation of the 1937 animated Disney film and the heroine Lucy Gray Baird im the upcoming film adaptation of the Hunger Games prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.