As of 2025, Zoe Saldana is an Oscar-winning actor with more than 70 roles under her belt.
“I was like, ‘What the f***?
I’m going to wear, like, a pink leotard?'”
Thankfully, she explained that ballet “saved [her] sanity.”
Saldana said, “It really put me on this path of being an artist.”
However, when Saldana was just 9 years old, her dad was tragically killed in a car crash.
The “Amsterdam” star received the news from her grandmother.
“‘Papa wants us to get through this.
But kindly understand this part of life: death came knocking and took one of us.'”
Unfortunately, things got worse before they got better.
“you could’t code-switch.”
Sadly, while the girls were mourning the loss of their father, they ran into trouble at school.
“And we weren’t little victims.
We pushed back, but then they pushed harder, because they all understood each other.”
“These sound like small things, but they add up in a day.
It was hard.”
Fortunately, the three girls had each other to lean on as they navigated their new lives together.
Instead, her mom kept her occupied with activities like dance.
It became an outlet for the actor, who found herself struggling with paying attention and sitting still.
“I just remember asking myself, ‘Why don’t I fit in?
Why do I do this?'”
“It would make me really sad, and it would make me feel really isolated.”
However, she once said she was over dating actors.
“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” Saldana quipped during a 2013 interview withAllure.
“It was unfair and uneven,” Saldana said to Cosmopolitan UK in April 2018 (viaE!
Saldana also highlighted how she had to work harder because of her Black and Latina heritage.
“Ask any artists of color if they feel like they have to work harder,” she said.
I woke up today feeling absolute gratitude that I had you as a friend and colleague."
Understandably, critics called it as they saw it: blackface.
Of course, this wasn’t the response many were hoping to hear from Saldana.
“I should have never played Nina,” she said.
“I’m so sorry.
I know better today.”
To combat her symptoms, Saldana and her husband avoid gluten and dairy in their diet.
“You create antibodies that attack your glands, so you have to eat clean,” she said.
“I had a great time in my 20s,” Saldana remarked.
“Then your doctor says you’re losing calcium in your bones.
What the f*** is that?!”
“All of a sudden it hits you … it’s from night to day,” she said.
“The thing about grief is that it’s ongoing,” the star toldUSA Todayin October 2022.
“It will never get better; it just becomes manageable.”
“What are they left with after that battle has been lost?
What do they do with the pieces that they’re left with?”
It isn’t just movies, though, that are impacted by Saldana’s anxiety and dyslexia.
But there was an even bigger fallout when internet sleuths uncovered Islamophobic tweets from actor Karla Sofia Gascon.
Although she wasn’t directly responsible for Gascon’s rhetoric, it was clear Saldana was devastated.
A journalist highlighted that the movie’s portrayal of Mexico was “really hurtful for us Mexicans.”
Saldana replied, “I’m very, very sorry that many Mexicans felt offended.”
We spoke from a place of love."
