Rachel Zegler arrived at her first red carpet — the Met Gala — draped in haute couture.

She sat front row at Paris Fashion Week with a beret and a smile.

Made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list ... at 20.

And won the National Board of Review award for best actress.

In that order. All before her official film debut.

And what a debut.

The anointing of Zegler comes as the public gets ready to see — and hear — the New Jersey talent in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” set to hit theaters Friday, Dec. 10.

Her wide-eyed sincerity and brilliant voice announce her to the world as Maria, the quintessential “leading lady.” Soon, she’ll play a bona fide Disney princess.

Public glare and high-profile events that come with being a rising star can be daunting on their own. Try it for more than a year without your first movie opening.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed back the release of the 20th Century Studios/Disney movie — filmed in New York, Paterson and Newark — a full 12 months.

“It’s the weirdest thing ever,” Zegler tells NJ Advance Media. “It’s the most jarring feeling as someone who is quite literally in therapy for impostor syndrome. You’re sitting at the table with the likes of these incredible actors, singers, activists, Olympians, models who have earned their due.

“They earned their seat at the table, and you can’t help but think, ‘What am I doing here?’”

Zegler — the first Latina actor to play Maria on film — grew up in Clifton, just a few miles from where Spielberg filmed parts of the movie. She is a crown jewel of his adaptation of the 1957 musical from Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim, the hero of musical theater who praised the new film before his death in November.

The story has been a part of American culture for decades, only intensifying the spotlight on Zegler. This “Romeo and Juliet”-inspired tale became a sensational film in 1961, bringing song, dance and danger to New York. The Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang, and their white rivals in the Jets rumble and war, spilling young blood in Manhattan.

But star-crossed lovers Maria and Tony, who live on opposite sides of the conflict, are lost in reverie. They gaze at each other as if they’re dreaming, like someone could snap their fingers and they’d jolt awake.

Zegler, who already has the broad smile and expressive eyes of a Disney princess, recently wore a similarly enchanted expression. She was looking up at a colossal version of her 5-foot-2 self on a digital billboard next to co-star Ansel Elgort (6-foot-4), who plays Tony.

Zegler — who spent her Jersey childhood beguiled by the lights of Broadway — is now the face of “West Side Story,” 60 years after the debut of the hugely successful movie musical directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, which won 10 Academy Awards, including best picture.

Such a swift ascent arrived with some unease for Zegler, who turns 21 in May. She was christened the next big thing with a six-page feature in Vogue. But when it was published in November 2020, she still had a year-plus wait for her screen debut.

“I just crumbled at that thought,” she says, “because it was so weird to be doing all of these incredible things, yet not having anything to show for it as to why I earned my seat there.”

Savoring the moment

It turns out that playing a lead in Spielberg’s first movie musical is quite the resume builder, even if moviegoers have yet to see her on screen.

In 2019, the Clifton teen was chosen from more than 30,000 “West Side Story” hopefuls, setting in motion a number of opportunities. After Maria, she was cast opposite Zachary Levi, Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu as a goddess in the superhero movie “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” which wrapped this past summer.

Next, she becomes Snow White in a live-action musical adaptation of Disney’s first animated film, with Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, playing the Evil Queen.

When the pandemic shuttered Broadway theaters, the “West Side Story” premiere that Zegler had anticipated for months seemed to have been snatched away like the sweetness in, say, a bitterly poisoned apple.

But quarantine granted helpful reflection, she says — and perspective.

“It’s taken a lot in me to not constantly shut myself down and say that I don’t deserve the things that I’ve been able to do because they’ve been really cool,” Zegler says. “And I have worked really hard to be where I am. It’s just that it’s work that people haven’t seen yet. I think that public gratification is what my mind is looking for. That is not what it’s all about. It’s about how you feel about yourself.”

Still, a whole lot of public gratification is headed Zegler’s way.

Apart from the National Board of Review honor, the actor’s performance has propelled her to some best actress picks ahead of the 2022 Oscar nominations. Even after Maria, her other projects ensure she’s going to be in the spotlight for years.

In the middle of promoting “West Side Story,” Zegler stopped to devote an Instagram post to herself. She wanted to take it all in, to remember.

“When you see yourself on subway entrances,” she wrote, “remember the way you’d dance on those bustling cars to no music. Remember the terrified teenager at Lincoln Center who didn’t know how to dance ... remember not being able to fit two people in the back of an Escalade because your dress was too big.”

That last memory was courtesy of the American Music Awards, where Zegler joined Elgort, 27, in November to serve as a presenter in a particularly voluminous tiered gown.

She almost didn’t audition ... then made Spielberg cry

Zegler first played the role that would change everything in the summer of 2017, in a production of “West Side Story” at BergenPAC’s Performing Arts School. She was 16.

Alexander Diaz, creative director of education at the Englewood arts center, had cast her as Cosette in “Les Misérables” the previous year.

“Every girl was singing ‘On My Own’ as their audition piece,” he says. “When Rachel came in, it’s like I never heard it before. That was the first time I heard it the way it was supposed to be done. I was just blown away at this young, small person with this power and this voice that can fill an arena without any amplification.”

Gianna Grosso, who played Anita in BergenPAC’s “West Side Story,” recalls Zegler’s “bubbly sweetness.” They had known each other only a few days when Rachel found out it was her birthday and gave her a card.

When she sang “Tonight” and “One Hand, One Heart” at the first rehearsal, the whole room was “just in awe,” says Grosso, 22. “She’s a really angelic talent.”

Zegler says the local production was “one hell of an experience,” but not in a way that made her want a repeat. So when a friend sent her an open casting call on Twitter for Spielberg’s film, her instinct was to take a step back.

In fact, Zegler’s career-making role “definitely almost didn’t happen,” she says.

Zegler associated the show with stress, stemming from a lack of direction in the creative process when she first played Maria, she says.

“I kind of was oversaturated in the world of ‘West Side Story’ and almost didn’t send in an audition tape because I was so ... I don’t wanna say over it, because that music has always been a part of my life and I love it so much,” she says. “But I felt like I was too close to it, and I had just finished that production prior to when I sent in my first audition tape.”

In a video submission, she showed off her considerable vocal talents with “I Feel Pretty” and “Tonight,” the starry Maria and Tony “balcony” duet she sings with Elgort on a fire escape.

Zegler’s auditions spanned January 2018 to January 2019, both for Spielberg and the film’s creative team.

The time in between? Agony.

“I don’t think I’ve ever cried and lost sleep more in my life,” Zegler says. “I sincerely mean that. I was going through so many life changes at that point in time.”

She was moving from junior to senior year of high school. She was trying to figure out college. But “West Side Story” was always in the background, beckoning with possibility.

She just didn’t know.

“I had this huge life change looming over my head of will it-won’t it happen?” Zegler says.

At the time, she had no official representative to try to get an answer. She made one call, 10 months into auditions, to Kristie Macosko Krieger, a producer of the film, letting her know that she was moving forward with college applications.

“She told me that she thought it would be wise,” Zegler says.

Deflated, she interpreted that response as “I’m not getting this part.”

“I had my mini heartbreak, but then you move on as we do in this industry — move on to the next,” she says.

Zegler started auditioning for other movies and Broadway shows. Her plan was to study musical theater at Montclair State University, a five-minute drive from her home.

But like the song goes, Spielberg saw her “and the world went away.”

The storied director grew up listening to the 1957 “West Side Story” cast album (he dedicated the film to his father, Arnold, who died last year at 103). But he absolutely melted when Zegler sang for him in person.

“It was one of those things that I wear as a badge of honor,” she says. “I made him cry.”

Though offscreen “ghost” singers subbed for actors in the 1961 movie — Marni Nixon sang for Natalie Wood’s Maria — Spielberg was casting performers who could fill both roles.

In the tryout, Zegler applied her dulcet, potent soprano to the song “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” alongside a candidate for the role of Anita, which ended up going to the dazzling Ariana DeBose (”The Prom”).

“We had only intended to do the first 16 to 32 bars and ended up going through the entire song,” Zegler says. “By the time we were done, we looked at him and he had tears streaming down his face. It was an incredible moment, something that I certainly will never forget. All of a sudden, it just didn’t feel so scary anymore.”

The actor calls Spielberg “a blessing of a human being.”

“The most intimidating thing about him is his name,” Zegler says. “The second you meet him, he is the most generous, genuine human being. We were two peas in a pod. I’m so blessed to have him in my life, and to have him guiding me through this crazy journey.”

Yes to Maria. But first ... Shrek.

When Zegler learned she’d be Spielberg’s Maria, the possibilities for her talent and career seemed greater than ever before.

But she had a question.

Would the schedule allow her to star in her high school production of “Shrek The Musical”? She was determined to have her last hurrah as Princess Fiona at Immaculate Conception High School in Lodi.

That’s the stage that really made her. She was without question its resident superstar.

From her freshman year, Zegler — who graduated from the Catholic girls’ school as salutatorian in 2019 — delivered virtuoso performances as Belle in “Beauty and the Beast,” Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” and Dorothy Brock in “42nd Street.”

Michael Wada, the school’s director of performing arts, tends to advise students with aspirations in the field to have some kind of backup plan. With Zegler, he didn’t have a shred of doubt she would be successful.

“She was a natural born talent,” he says.

Zegler spent her early childhood and elementary school years in her home parish at St. Philip the Apostle School (now St. Philip Prep) in Clifton.

“I went on to work as a cantor and a wedding singer and a funeral singer at that same church before anyone would even consider paying me to act,” she says.

Jessica Cutrona remembers when Zegler delivered a solo of “Hallelujah” as part of Immaculate Conception’s choir performance at her son’s baptism.

“One of my friends in the audience turns to me and says, ‘She’s in high school?!?’” says Cutrona, now dean of the school. “I mean, you could hear a pin drop. That’s how beautiful she sounded.”

And yes, she had enough time to squeeze “Shrek” in before she graduated and continued work on “West Side Story.” Elgort even made an appearance at the high school musical.

Zegler’s alma mater has organized an outing on the film’s opening day at the Clifton AMC. Other New Jersey communities will be looking out for their young locals in the film, too.

Patrick Higgins, 18, grew up watching a DVD of “West Side Story.” He was a 15-year-old sophomore at North Arlington High School when he auditioned for the movie, having played Billy Elliot in community theater in Florida. It was his first open call — he was just looking for experience with the process. Seven auditions later, he was cast as Baby John, a member of the Jets, alongside Mike Faist (”Dear Evan Hansen”), the Tony-nominated actor who plays gang leader Riff.

“When I heard that we were going to be going to Paterson, it was really fun because I wouldn’t have to get up as early to get a ride into the city,” says Higgins, now a musical theater student at Montclair State University.

He didn’t share scenes with Zegler, but they did have something in common.

“For a little bit, we were the only two minors in rehearsals,” he says, which meant they had to have a parent with them. He was 16, so his mother, Christine Higgins, was there for the duration of his work on the film.

Zegler attended the New York premiere of “West Side Story” with her parents and sister Jacqueline, 22, but it was her mother who got the best view of the making of the film. Gina Zegler, who works at a school for children with disabilities, was on set with her daughter because Rachel was only 17 when the project started.

“I think I probably would’ve had an emotional breakdown every single day if my mom hadn’t been there with me,” she says.

Her father, Craig Zegler, was present in another way. He works in construction.

“I always say that he constructed my Nueva York,” Zegler says. “I walk through these streets and my dad is everywhere, and that is such a huge blessing. Right now I’m sitting in a hotel looking at One World Trade. He worked on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. He built the new Yankee Stadium. He just did the expansion on the Javits Center.”

Meeting Sondheim and Springsteen

In less than three years, Zegler has gone from singing at North Jersey weddings to shining in the celebrity firmament. But she still gets starstruck.

“I had to sit next to Rosamund Pike without peeing myself,” Zegler tweeted in September after the Dior womenswear show in Paris.

The young actor, who has eyebrows Audrey Hepburn would envy, wore a denim Dior beret and pinafore befitting her ingenue status. Deva Cassel, the model daughter of actors Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, sat on her other side, next to fellow film scion Zoey Deutch (”Zombieland: Double Tap”), the actor daughter of Lea Thompson and director Howard Deutch.

“West Side Story” is stocked with young actors making their movie debuts. But behind the scenes, the film hosted its own galaxy of celebrities.

Not just Spielberg, but Sondheim. And Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen?

When Spielberg filmed in Newark and Paterson — where downtown storefronts were turned into the 1950s territory of the Jets and Sharks — his bud The Boss made several visits to the set and recording sessions.

“I’m a Jersey girl through and through,” Zegler says. “I love Bruce Springsteen. I’ve had a crush on him since I could speak, so the fact that he came to see me do my thing was so crazy.”

He greeted the cast and crew (and the mayor of Paterson) in August 2019 outside city hall on Ellison Street, where the big musical number “America” features actors dancing and singing.

“He and Steve Sondheim were sitting next to each other, and I just couldn’t go up to either of them that day,” Zegler says of another occasion in Newark. When Springsteen listened in on orchestra recordings for the film, he even brought a friend — former President Barack Obama.

And when Zegler and Springsteen did get to talk, the subject didn’t stray far from home.

“We had some conversations about down the Shore and how we used to perform at The Columns (in Avon-by-the-Sea),” she says. “We spoke our own language, I think. We had a conversation about Avon-by-the-Sea versus Asbury Park versus Belmar versus Bradley Beach versus Jenkinson’s and Point Pleasant because my parents met in Point Pleasant. And Steven (Spielberg) was just baffled by the way that we knew exactly what the other person was talking about.”

Sondheim, who died Nov. 26 at 91, was a guiding presence during the making of the film. At the time, the renowned composer and lyricist — the “artist who has created so much of the reason why so many of us do what we do today,” Zegler says — was the last living creator of “West Side Story.”

“It was one of his first professional gigs,” she says of the 1957 musical. “And it was my first professional gig. I felt that connection to him this entire process, and I feel it even more now that we’ve lost him.”

Sondheim praised the new “West Side Story” film in a September appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

“The whole thing has real sparkle to it and real energy, and it feels fresh,” he told Colbert. “It’s really first rate.”

Sondheim was present when Zegler and the cast recorded songs to give to conductor Gustavo Dudamel so tracks could be produced for the purposes of singing live on set. He abided by the old industry custom of not complimenting performers to their face, but his reaction got back to Zegler.

“He said that I sounded like a nightingale,” she says. “And I will never forget that for as long as I live.”

Speaking 1957 Nuyorican

When the casting announcement for “West Side Story” came out in 2019, the project drew some criticism, partly because of the 1961 film.

“Life is all right in America if you’re all-white in America,” the Puerto Rican characters sing in “America,” but there are also lines that perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Puerto Rico.

While Rita Moreno, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, won an Oscar for playing Anita (Tony winner Chita Rivera originated the role on Broadway), white actor Natalie Wood played Maria, who is Puerto Rican. Another white actor, George Chakiris, won an Oscar for playing Maria’s brother Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks. White performers playing Puerto Rican characters in the film wore dark makeup, and Moreno was forced to do the same.

In 2018, Spielberg and Tony Kushner (”Angels in America,” Spielberg’s “Munich”), the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who wrote the new “West Side Story” script, visited the University of Puerto Rico for a town hall. They were asked how they would represent Puerto Ricans in their movie, given issues with the musical’s past portrayals.

Spielberg said the narrative “speaks a lot to what’s happening today — it’s very relevant in terms of what’s happening on the borders, and very relevant today to essentially the rejection of anyone who isn’t white, and that’s a big part of our story.”

The director committed to casting Latino and Latina actors as Puerto Ricans in his 2021 version of “West Side Story.” Zegler is of Colombian heritage through her mother.

“I think the original film is a product of its time,” Zegler says. “It will always stand as a symbol of iconic, old Hollywood movie musicals. It was revolutionary for the time, because even if the representation was skewed in a certain way, you talk to a lot of people, it was the first time that they had ‘seen’ themselves on screen, especially with Rita Moreno ...

“We are a step in the right direction when it comes to the conversation surrounding representation in Hollywood. Everything will age the way it ages, and it’s so important to remember that.”

One of the major changes Kushner and Spielberg made is that Maria, Bernardo and Anita don’t just have Puerto Rican accents — they actually converse in Spanish. The cast worked with dialect coaches to nail the slang of what Zegler calls “1957 Nuyorican,” along with nuances based on what part of Puerto Rico characters are from. A breakfast scene with the leads was repeatedly rewritten to get the dialogue right.

“We were joking about giving Tony Kushner a wrap gift that just has every rewrite on a T-shirt,” Zegler said in a cast talk after the first large screening of the film Nov. 28 in New York. Historical precision was “hugely important,” she said, and added dimension to the film.

“This display of Latin joy, it’s something that a lot of us haven’t seen before,” Zegler tells NJ Advance Media. “I know for a fact that I didn’t grow up seeing the joy we’ve seen represented in movies like ‘In the Heights’ and ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Encanto,’” she says, pointing to other films released this year that center Latina and Latino characters.

Kushner’s script came with pages of backstory for Maria — “this iconic character that everyone just kind of knows as this Virgin Mary in the white dress with the red belt,” Zegler says. “We wanted more than that.”

Maria’s biographical details aren’t all in the movie, but they did inform Zegler’s performance.

“The role was given so much heart, so much agency, so much attention that I feel like she had never been given before, that she was beyond this virginal teenage character,” Zegler says. “She had a story. She had a voice.”

Her favorite scene to film with Elgort was when Maria takes Tony to task for his myopic view of the differences between Bernardo and Jets leader Riff — essentially the chasm between the experiences of Puerto Ricans and white people.

“She looks at him and says, ‘Do you think it’s easier for us?’ Because there’s a whole perspective that is missing.”

This year, Zegler replied to criticism and racist comments after being cast as a new version of the first Disney princess. The animated character from 1937′s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was based on the German fairytale where she had “skin as white as snow.”

“Yes I am Snow White,” Zegler said on Twitter. “No I am not bleaching my skin for the role.”

She later deleted the tweet.

“There’s always a ways to go, especially in this industry,” she says of representation in Hollywood. “We’re gonna keep changing and evolving and learning. And I hope people hold space for that.”

Living in the now

As every Rachel Zegler fan on social media knows — she currently has more than 400,000 followers between Instagram and Twitter, and 200,000 more on YouTube — she’s never shy about sharing every moment of the ride.

Her day-one followers remember how before the red carpets and movie premieres, she posted spot-on renditions of Broadway songs and covers she filmed in her Clifton bedroom and bathroom. She still posts those, along with original songs — this year she released a single, “Let Me Try,” on streaming outlets.

When she wowed with a viral cover of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow” from “A Star is Born” in 2018, she tweeted a video of her high-powered vocal as a response to anyone saying she uses Auto-Tune.

Zegler was cast in “West Side Story” a few weeks later, the ultimate mic-drop.

She remains transparent on social media, freely vlogging her mood on YouTube. Her most recent dispatch — “life is exciting but I cry a lot” — is a 24-minute video documenting fittings, international press obligations, her first time on a private jet and the usual dashes around New York, sometimes incredulous at her image on movie posters, sometimes in tears.

“I am very overwhelmed, so I am crying a lot these days,” she said walking through Manhattan.

Since she was that 16-year-old Jersey girl hoping to get the gig, she’s has worked with Oscar, Tony and Emmy-winning actor Helen Mirren in filming “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” the sequel to the 2019 superhero film “Shazam!” due out in June 2023. She’s met Springsteen and Sondheim and Oscar-winning writer, director and actor Taika Waititi (”Jojo Rabbit,” “Thor: Ragnarok”).

“I’ve been so blessed to have met so many of my heroes and not been disappointed,” Zegler says.

But she’s also made deeper connections. Zegler left the “West Side Story” set with a best friend in Josh Andrés Rivera, who plays Chino, Maria’s original date to the dance where she meets Tony.

“I think we really helped each other through the delays,” she says of the film’s postponement. “He was my rock throughout all of it.”

These days, the avowed Jerseyan has been spending plenty of time in New York.

“I would love to be here permanently,” Zegler says. “But I will be in London for a couple months next year, working on a project. So home is indeed where the heart is at the moment.”

Will that project be “Snow White,” directed by Marc Webb (”The Amazing Spider-Man”) and reportedly scripted by Greta Gerwig (”Lady Bird”)?

To answer, she channels Tony.

“I’ll quote ‘West Side Story,’” she says. “‘Could be! Who knows?’”

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.