Rachel Zegler

Rachel Zegler is an actress and singer who portrayed Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

Biography[]

Zegler was born on May 3, 2001, in Hackensack, New Jersey at the Hackensack University Medical Center to Gina and Craig Zegler. She was named after the fictional character Rachel Green from the TV show Friends. She has an older sister. Her mother is of Colombian descent. Zegler's maternal grandmother immigrated from Colombia to the United States in the 1960s. Her father is of Polish descent. Zegler was raised in Clifton, New Jersey, where she attended St. Philip the Apostle Preparatory School. She then attended the Catholic all-girls college-preparatory Immaculate Conception High School. She graduated from high school on June 2, 2019.

Career[]

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), 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.

Zegler's YouTube channel has been active since July 2015 and has received attention. As of 2020, Zegler's video of herself singing "Shallow", from A Star Is Born, has garnered over 11 million views on Twitter.

In January 2018, director Steven Spielberg posted an open casting call via Twitter for a new film adaptation of West Side Story. Zegler, then 16 years old, 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, making her the first actress of Colombian descent to win in that category as well as the youngest winner in that category at 20 years old.

She has since been casted in films such as DC's Shazam: Fury of the Gods, Disney's Snow White and Spellbound.

On May 31, 2022, Variety reported that Zegler had been cast in the role of Lucy Gray Baird after Zegler teased it on her Twitter the night before.^[1] Zegler reported receiving death threats following her casting.^[2] Zegler reportedly initially turned down the role of Lucy Gray Baird, fearful of traveling thousands of miles to film in Germany and Poland and being so far away from home.^[3]

Awards[]

Only awards associated with The Hunger Games franchise are listed.

Trivia[]

• Zegler is the girlfriend of Josh Andrés Rivera, who was her co-star in West Side Story.
• Zegler initially turned down the role of Lucy Gray because filming for The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes would start only three days after she was set to wrap another shoot, and she was worried she would be lonely being away from home for so long. However, she changed her mind after her boyfriend Josh auditioned and landed the role of Sejanus Plinth. Producers had no idea they were dating at the time he was cast.^[4]
• Her sister Jacklyn made a cameo during the District 12 reaping scene.^[4]

External links[]

• Rachel Zegler on Wikipedia
• Rachel Zegler at the Internet Movie Database
• Rachel Zegler on Instagram
• Official YouTube Channel
• Rachel Zegler on Twitter

References[]