Most actors want to become world-renowned due to their hard work. They consider themselves "serious actors"; they spend years working odd jobs while going to auditions, take on projects, promote them endlessly, do the red carpets… all for the slight chance of becoming one in a million.
If you ask us, an actor's (or any type of celebrity's) success is measured not by the number of awards sitting on their shelves, or whether or not they landed a role in the latest Christopher Nolan movie, but by the number of memes they inspire the internet to create with their image.
And Zendaya, friends, has proven her worth time and time again.
Some people are simply born to become memes, and through the years, the one and only Zendaya has proved that a meme is the role she was born to play. It doesn't matter if she's rocking a huge hat on a red carpet (and possibly hiding her boyfriend in it), smiling at her phone in a Spider-Man film, or simply being a baddie in that weird tennis movie; Zendaya's face has inspired a variety of memes, each of which went viral and became an absolute sensation.
The latest meme that Zendaya has given us was inspired by a video of young Z on a red carpet in 2011, where she is gracefully smiling at the cameras pointing at her. A throwback account posted a video of a few young celebrities posing at the Never Say Never premiere in 2011, and for some reason, the selection of poses 15-year-old Zendaya chose to display one after the other sounded the reaction meme alarm and created a celebration on Twitter. People took the 2-second clip and ran with it, using it to describe thousands of relatable moments from our everyday life, as memes do.
We hope that wherever Zendaya is, probably enjoying some alone time with hubby Tom Holland after all those press tours, that she's proud of her internet legacy. We sure are proud of her. Scroll down to view some of the best and most hilarious 2026 Zendaya memes.