Young American actress and host Dara Renee is currently enjoying the first major roles of her career. She is playing Kourtney Greene in the award-winning Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a spin-off of the phenomenally successful franchise that has already won the GLAAD Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming. In 2021, she was named as the host of another new Disney show, Disney’s Magic Bake-Off. Unsurprisingly, Renee has become a huge hit on social media, particularly on TikTok Instagram, where she can boast well over half a million followers.

Renee was born in Los Angeles in 2000 but grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where her actress mother established Encouraging Youth to Dream, a non-profit performing arts school. Unsurprisingly, given the environment she grew up in, Renee gravitated towards acting and performing and initially looked to make it on the New York theatre scene before returning to California to attend the Charter High School of the Arts. In 2018, she got her first role, playing Savannah in the Disney television movie Freaky Friday, a warmly reviewed production based on the classic children’s novel and subsequent Disney stage musical.

Other small roles followed before Renee got her big break being cast as Kourtney Greene in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Greene was originally intended to be a one-off character but was soon made a member of the main cast. The show has now been renewed for a third season, signalling that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this wonderfully talented young actress.