The movies that shaped Zoe Saldaña’s career: “I fell completely in love”
Over the past 25 years, Zoe Saldaña has steadily risen through the Hollywood ranks, culminating in her win for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ at the 2025 Academy Awards. That victory for her stirring performance in the crime musical Emilia Pérez was validation for an actor who had previously hit her highest points as part of science-fiction and action movies. In truth, though, perhaps Saldaña’s success in those kinds of films was to be expected when you consider the movies she says initially shaped her movie fandom and career.
It sounds strange to say that Saldaña’s aptitude for dramatic performance might have gone under the radar until Emilia Pérez. However, it could be argued that she has always been slightly undervalued because of the movies she is best known for. As Neytiri in the Avatar movies, Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Uhura in JJ Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek franchise, Saldaña has been an integral part of three of the biggest sci-fi franchises ever. However, as one of her directors argued, her charismatic, raw performances weren’t given their due because of the genre they existed in.
In 2024, Avatar director James Cameron told Variety, “I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a calibre less than that. 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.”
For Saldaña, though, acting in science-fiction movies has never been a burden, and she certainly would never regard them as a lesser genre. After all, when she was asked in 2009 about her favourite films, she immediately listed off a succession of sci-fi greats – including a couple helmed by Cameron long before he knew her.
“I grew up in a sci-fi environment and am a huge sci-fi fanatic,” Saldaña gushed. “So, Ripley and Sarah Connor are some of my favourite characters of all time.” She was, of course, referring to Sigourney Weaver’s iconic Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise and Linda Hamilton’s equally iconic turn in Cameron’s The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
“I am driven toward women who are very strong and commanding and kick alien ass and all that stuff,” Saldaña continued. “I would say Blade Runner and The Hunger, which is one of Tony Scott’s first films. I saw it when I was very young – I think I saw it when I was nine or ten – and I fell completely in love with the movie. It felt completely dark and hopeless because these people were eternally condemned and unable to love.”
When it came to Ridley Scott’s seminal future noir Blade Runner, though, as well as the late David Lynch’s original 1984 version of Dune, Saldaña revealed that they fired her imagination, even if she was too young to truly comprehend what she was watching. “I wasn’t old enough to understand the concept,” she explained. “But the fact that I was to grow older and be able to one day look at it and go, ‘I get this now’ was so exciting to me at the age of five.”
It will be interesting to see Saldaña’s career path now that she is an Oscar winner – but it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if she still made her fair share of sci-fi pictures.
