The 2004 movie that stopped Zoe Saldaña from quitting acting: “Restored my faith”
Zoe Saldaña has attained a rare honour in Hollywood of being the highest-grossing actor of all time at the global box office, a badge that keeps changing hands between her and her former co-star, Scarlett Johansson.
It’s often a title that will go to the actor who is in the most high-profile franchises, and Saldaña has amassed a more than impressive resume; she was Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean, Uhura in the rebooted Star Trek films, Netyiri in the Avatar franchise, and Gamora in both the Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers series.
Simply popping up in these massive sagas would be one thing, but Saldaña is credited as having done something interesting with each of her characters, becoming a fan-favourite many times. She was able to bring more depth to Uhura, a part consistently underserved in the original Star Trek series, Netyiri became one of the most realistic and advanced CGI characters ever because of what Saldaña did with her motion-capture performance, and Gamora has one of the most complex and satisfying character arcs out of anyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Saldaña enjoying the distinction of playing two different versions existing in distinct timelines.
Despite these successes, her career got off to a difficult start when she appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, in which she felt overpowered by the weight of being in a massive film with titanic box office expectations that made her question her line of work, but Saldaña said that she changed her mind after doing The Terminal, a heart-warming 2004 romantic comedy from Steven Spielberg.
“I worked with Steven Spielberg eight months later, and he restored my faith that big can also be great,” Saldaña admitted.
The Terminal was certainly a change-of-pace for Spielberg, who made it his first all-out comedy since 1941, which was one of the biggest flops of his career. He had just finished making three of the darkest films of his career in 2004, with the heartbreaking science fiction drama AI Artificial Intelligence, the paranoid futuristic thriller Minority Report, and the emotionally wrought biopic Catch Me If You Can.
Making a comedy didn’t mean that Spielberg took his work on The Terminal any less seriously, but Saldaña said that the director went above and beyond to ensure that everyone on set was having a pleasant experience. She remembered that he would play music on the loudspeakers of the airport set that had been created so that everyone would be “synchronised and on the same page”.
The film tends to be ranked towards the bottom of most assessments of Spielberg’s career, but as with nearly all of his films, it’s one that is improved upon a rewatch. Beyond the technical achievement of replicating an entire airport, borrowing from the style of Jacques Tati, the filmmaker dared to make a movie about immigration in America that explored the challenges of the process.
Saldaña’s role in the film is a small but memorable one, mostly because of her great chemistry with Diego Luna. Most interesting is that her character is revealed to be a massive Star Trek fan, and that it would only be five years later that she would be starring in the rebooted franchise from Spielberg’s protege, JJ Abrams.
