After winning her first Golden Globe for her performance in Emilia Perez, Zoe Saldaña is grateful to the filmmakers who believed in her over the course of her 25-year career.
In the press room after the awards ceremony, Saldaña shared that she heard from “Avatar” director James Cameron after her big win. “I was sitting in the audience, and I got a message from James Cameron, who’s somewhere in New Zealand right now, cutting ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash.’ And he, after all these years, believes in me. And that, for me, fuels my desire to continue to grow as an artist.” .
Cameron gushed about the actor in an interview in October diverse COVER STORY: “I’ve worked with Oscar-winning actors, and nothing Zoe does is lower than that,” he said. “But because in my movie she’s playing a ‘CG character’, it doesn’t count somehow, which doesn’t make sense to me at all. She can go from regal to completely brutal in a nanosecond. The woman is ferocious. She’s a freaking lioness.”
Saldaña has long been a star at the box office, leading the three highest-grossing films of all time — 2009’s “Avatar” and its 2022 sequel “The Way of Water,” which ranked first and third, respectively, with 2019’s “Avengers.” : Endgame” falls in between. This year, however, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” star has received a level of critical acclaim and awards that she has never enjoyed before in her career.
“What I feel is actually joy, because there is a sense of presence. I have been in this industry for 25 years,” she said. “I have always been an employee. I’ve always had good people, undeniably amazing and talented filmmakers, believe in me, bet on me, and constantly trust me. This recognition is crucial to my survival as an artist. I’m happy. I am 46 years old. There was a moment a couple of years ago where I was kind of thinking, “Do I go into a house and start a garden?” But the truth is that I am an artist in every sense of the word, and I need to create every day. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Saldana also took time to shout out “Emilia Pérez” director Jacques Audiard, adding: “I owe it to filmmakers like Jacques Audiard that, after conversations, tests and promises that I could do something, they really decided to bet on me. And it worked.”
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