James Cameron calls Zoe Saldaña a “world-class performer” after Oscar win
Oscar-winning director James Cameron has publicly championed Zoe Saldaña after she won ‘Best Supporting Actress’ at the 97th Academy Awards for her performance in Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez.
It was Saldaña’s first Oscar win and capped off a successful award show run for the actor, as she had already picked up a Bafta, Screen Actors Guild, and Golden Globe award for the same category.
Cameron, who worked with Saldaña on his Oscar-winning epic and highest-grossing movie of all time, Avatar, has publicly supported her Academy Award nod and subsequent speech: “I was so happy to see Zoe acknowledged as the world-class performer we, in the Avatar family, have always known her to be. Her acceptance speech was a noble reminder of what immigrant families bring to the US and to Hollywood.”
In her speech, Saldaña referred to herself as the “proud child of immigrant parents” and revealed that she had become the first American of Dominican descent to win an Oscar.
“And I know I will not be the last. I hope,” she added. “The fact that I’m getting an award for a role where I got to sing and speak in Spanish — my grandmother, if she were here, she would be so delighted; this is for my grandmother.”
Following her Golden Globes win in January, Saldaña revealed the continued support Cameron has shown to her during her press conference: “I was sitting in the audience, and I received 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,” she said. “So that, to me, nourishes my desire to continue growing as an artist.”
Last year, in a Variety cover story, Cameron spoke of Saldaña’s acting ability and how it compares to that of an Oscar winner: “I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a calibre less than that”. He added, “But because in my film she’s playing a ‘CG character,’ it kind of doesn’t count in some way, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral. The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness.”
Cameron’s sequel, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is set to be released in theatres on December 18th and will now be fronted by an Academy Award-winning Saldaña.
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