Rachel Zegler

Rachel Anne Zegler was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on May 3, 2001, to Gina and Craig Zegler. She was named after the fictional character Rachel Green from the TV series Friends. She has an older sister. Her mother was born in the United States to Colombian immigrants and was partially raised in Barranquilla. Her father is of distant Polish descent. Zegler grew up in Clifton, New Jersey. She says she faced racial discrimination on social media growing up due to her mixed ethnicity. Zegler became a fan of the theater after seeing her first Broadway show, Beauty and the Beast, at age four. Her first acting role came when she was 12, when she played Shprintze in a play of Fiddler on the Roof. She then decided she wanted to be an actress, and began taking voice and acting lessons. Zegler attended Immaculate Conception High School, where she starred in several musicals, playing Belle in Beauty and the Beast (2016), Ariel in The Little Mermaid (2017), Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street (2018), and Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical (2019). For all four performances, she received Metropolitan High School Theater Award nominations for the Actress in a Leading Role category. Her other roles have included Serena in Legally Blonde, Cosette in Les Misérables, and Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie. She graduated on June 2, 2019, as salutatorian. Her YouTube channel was active from July 2015 to August 2023 and also garnered media coverage.