Zoe Saldana

Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario was born on June 19, 1978, in New Jersey (United States), but her mother was Puerto Rican and her father Dominican. When she was 9 years old, her parent died in a traffic accident, and her mother decided to move to the Dominican Republic with Zoe and her sisters. “In New Jersey we didn’t feel different because we were of different races, but when I left there, I realized that this was not common in other countries, where each one got together especially with their own,” the woman herself told me. actress, during an interview.

In the Dominican Republic, Zoe Saldaña signed up for dance classes. Upon returning to the United States at the age of 17, she decided to participate in a program called Face Theater, for young people interested in acting, and she discovered that she was not bad at all. Along with her peers, she performed plays to educate teens about the risks of drug use and other topics of interest, but she displayed unusual talent. In fact, before finishing she was recruited by a talent agency, which got her a small role in an episode of Law and Order .

Soon after, she took advantage of her dancing skills to land the role of the talented dancer Eva, one of the protagonists of El ritmo del éxito . Since then, she has not lacked work in titles such as Crossroads (until the end) , starring Britney Spears , although she drew special attention as the pirate Anamaría, in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl , where she slapped a Jack Sparrow, the character played by Johnny Depp . Her stage name is Saldana, not Saldaña, so as not to confuse English speakers.

“My mother and I were huge moviegoers when I was little. We always saw films by great directors like Spielberg, which for me was very far away. I never dreamed that I would work with him”, Saldana confessed to me in the interview. The actress still does not quite believe the praise that Steven Spielberg dedicated to her , very satisfied with her work, after recruiting her to play the customs agent Dolores Torres, who continually denies her permission to play the character of Tom Hanks , in The Terminal .

After his work on the comedy Guess Who and the thriller In the Crosshairs , Saldana got a great opportunity from JJ Abrams , who needed a young actress to play Uhura, one of the protagonists of Star Trek ., although the character in the original series was an African American, and she is Latina. “I think they booked me for being black. In Hollywood they see all blacks as the same. At a difficult moment during the shoot I started to swear in Spanish. JJ was impressed. He asked me if she also spoke Spanish, and I had to confess that I come from a Dominican family,” Saldana told me with a laugh. “I am a professional actress. So my job is to become whatever. If my character is African American, I will become an African American. Art does not understand races…”.

The film was a great success, but not as much as James Cameron ‘s Avatar , a true mass phenomenon in which Saldana played the protagonist, the Na’vi who dazzled Sam Worthington ‘s character . Although she prepared the role of her for six months, and her voice is her own, her movements were digitized, and her character was recreated by computer. “It’s unlike anything she’s ever worked on before. I think it will be a revolution like the arrival of talkies ”, she commented to me, unleashing my utter disbelief. And then it turned out that he was right, because even those who don’t usually go to the cinema bought a ticket –online, because it was sold out– to see the film.

Now that she’s starting to become a star, Zoe Saldana’s future couldn’t be more promising. After playing the girl who mistakenly gives her boyfriend a drug in the American remake of A Dead Funeral , she has starred in the action film The Losers , the comedy-drama Burning Palms , and the thriller Thieves . The sequels to Avatar and Star Trek will soon be dropping as well .