From Center Stage to Rosemary’s Baby , the in-demand actress has always followed a path charted by her heart, even when it invokes controversy. Now Saldana is building a business based on this guiding principal.
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As Zoe Saldana opens the grimy door of my even messier Hyundai Elantra — filled with errant gym socks, dozens of old receipts, and even a toaster — and slides into the passenger seat, I am mortified.
Conducting an interview with the star of Center Stage, Avatar, and Rosemary's Baby in my filthy car was not the initial plan. Originally, I was to chat with Saldana as she got her hair and makeup done before being photographed for Jeff Vespa's coffee table book The Art of Discovery. But the hair dryer required to achieve her flawless blow-out made a conversation impossible. With time dwindling at the shoot, and another obligation looming across Los Angeles, she suggests the unconventional interview environment. And off we go.
Before I know it, Saldana and I are driving down Los Feliz's Amesbury Road, her designer bag sitting atop a pile of old receipts and her feet wedged between discarded Starbucks cups. "I love it," she says as I profusely apologize for the shabby state of my vehicle. "I'm actually glad we're doing the interview like this."
The impromptu setting serves to reinforce how in demand Saldana's time is. She'd just returned from a digital presentation at the NewFronts in New York City (where she had debuted My Hero, a web series she is executive producing for AOL) and was squeezing a photo shoot, her interview with BuzzFeed, a Lionsgate retreat in Malibu, and her husband's art show into a tight 48 hours before flying back to New York to attend the MET Gala with Michael Kors on May 5.
"The older I get, the more difficult all this traveling gets," says Saldana, who married artist Marco Perego in July 2013. "Also, when you're happy at home, you don't want to leave home. That's the part that's been taxing over the last year in my life. Plus, I've been working back-to-back-to-back-to-back for the last four years, so it's not like I've missed out on seven months here and there — I've missed four years of my life. That's a serious issue."
In addition to missing time with her husband, Saldana says living out of a suitcase has begun to take its toll on her craft as well. "It's very important that I'm living and my fountain of happiness — the well that I pull from — needs to be a little fuller in order for me to take from that and give out on screen," she says with a sigh. "When I'm running on empty, nothing fulfills me. In the past eight months, I've really felt this yearning to be home. To live. To go to my office. To fix my closets. To walk my dog consistently every day. To not only see my partner in the morning but also at night. That is becoming a priority that's very needed."
Saldana in Rosemary's Baby.
NBC
The 35-year-old will have to wait a bit longer until she can enjoy the fruits of her labor. Following the May 11 premiere of Rosemary's Baby, an adaptation of Ira Levin's 1967 novel (on which Roman Polanski's film was based) on NBC, she'll embark on a global promotional tour for Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's riskiest film to date, which stars Saldana, Chris Pratt, Glenn Close, and Benicio del Toro as the main players in an intergalactic race to save our solar system. Saldana plays Gamora, a green-skinned assassin in the film, a mix of outer space action and unexpected comedy.
Despite this being the third major franchise she's been a part of, the actress insists she's never looked at Guardians, Star Trek, or Avatar as smart business decisions. "I never make decisions from a strategic place," she says, as a tendril of her hair dances in the air conditioning. "I simply don't roll like that. I don't like to regret anything and the only time that happens is when I follow my heart. I'm a person who has to do what they want because if I do what I'm told to, you'll see it in my face. It's not that I'm unhappy, I'm just not motivated."
While Saldana concedes that a couple of bad independent films cemented this attitude earlier in her career, she says that she was taught from a very young age that honesty is always the best policy. "I was raised that most things are black or white and the truth is the best thing ever. Even if there are consequences that will gravely effect you, the truth is the truth and you have to fucking just make a show of faith."
Years studying ballet both tested and reinforced the lessons imparted by her parents, Asalia Nazario and Aridio Saldaña, the latter of whom died in a car accident when Saldana was 9. "The harshest mentors are ballet teachers," she says simply, like it was the truest fact in the world. "You either break because they made you feel bad or you learn to see life through their eyes. I learned to be very disciplined because of ballet; if I wanted to be the best, I needed to be there every day and be committed to it and respect it. Ballet was my first love affair, ever."
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