Lele Pons
Eleonora "Lele" Pons Maronese (born 25 June 1996) is a Venezuelan-born American YouTuber, actress and singer. Pons came to prominence on Vine before the platform was shut down in 2016 where she was the most followed woman and the third most followed viner with 11.5 million followers. She then expanded into creating comedy sketches for YouTube, where she has over 18 million subscribers as of August 2023. She has since acted in film, television, and music videos; released her own music; and co-authored a novel. She currently stars in The Secret Life of Lele Pons, a YouTube Original docuseries providing a look at her personal life, and hosts a podcast on Spotify called Best Kept Secrets with Lele Pons. Early life Eleonora Pons Maronese was born in Caracas, the daughter of pediatrician Anna Maronese Pivetta and architect Luis Guillermo Pons Mendoza. When she was a child, her parents separated after her father realized that he was gay. She is of Spanish and Italian descent, and is the niece of Puerto Rican singer Chayanne. She moved to the U.S. at the age of five and was raised in Miami. She graduated from Miami Country Day School in 2015 and moved to Los Angeles. She has said that she had trouble making friends in high school and would thus "get hurt to make them laugh". She has also described being bullied in high school: "I'm not like the cool girls—I'm the other girl. The one that's basically a nerd, but proud of that." Career Pons began her career on the video platform Vine. She has said she used Vine to showcase the creative things she was already doing. Speaking to Teen Vogue, Pons said, "I started with my friends, and I started becoming bad. At first it was just being really creative - it wasn't even funny stuff." Her follower base continued to grow and Pons has said that it "got to the point where a lot of people depended on me to make them... just so they could get a laugh." She became the first "Viner" to reach one billion loops. Writing in The Cut, Allie Jones described Pons' comedy as "universal, physical, and complete with a twist ending". Pons' comedic style has also been criticised. For instance, former Viner, Cody Ko, critically viewed one her sketches, saying, "This was written by a four-year-old." Pons cites, among her inspirations, several Latin American female stars such as Sofía Vergara, Gaby Espino, and Shakira. In 2016, she was signed with entertainment company Shots Studios. Pons has used her success in Internet comedy to launch a number of enterprises. In 2015, she launched a jewelry collection called UNO Magnetic. In 2016, Pons co-authored a novel based on her own high school experiences, Surviving High School, co-authored with Melissa de la Cruz. Pons starred as Callie in the 2016 romantic comedy We Love You, released on YouTube Red. In the movie, characters played by Yousef Erakat and Justin Dobies both fall for Pons, who is